


Sugary Shenanigans

by PenelopeJadewing



Series: Hambleton's Ice Creamery [3]
Category: Hambleton's Ice Creamery, Original Work
Genre: Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Elves, Friendship, Gen, Oneshot, Original Fiction, Short & Sweet, Sick Character, Sickfic, Slice of Life, Urban Fantasy, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeJadewing/pseuds/PenelopeJadewing
Summary: Marcy has the most in common with the two youngest employees at the ice cream shop, and that's his age. Other than that... that's it. That's all they have in common. In every other way, they couldn't be more different. The more Marcy finds himself sucked into their world, the more he feels like a planet that can't escape the pull of a nearby supergiant star.
Relationships: Marceline Ross & Hye Montegomery, Marceline Ross & Sundance Merryweather
Series: Hambleton's Ice Creamery [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1479212
Kudos: 3





	1. all stuffed up

When Marcy left for school that morning, all he’d felt in the back of his throat was an infinitesimal itch and a preoccupation with the answers he’d written out on his physics homework the night before. By the time he biked the way to work on admittedly precarious snow-slick roads, the itch had turned to a burn and an increasingly thick blockage in the back of his nose. Still, he told himself it was a cold. Just a cold, just like everybody seemed to have this time of year, just like his sister and his father. Just a cold.

He spent a grand total of seven minutes inside the walls of Hambleton’s, sniffled once within earshot of the boss, and Sam was on him like a mother hen.

“It’s flu season, kid,” he said, “I take no chances. Neither should you. Sunny’ll take you home.”

And of course, by ‘Sunny’ he actually meant Sunny and Hye, since heaven forbid Sunny go anywhere without his wolfy tagalong, no matter if they had more important things to do, like actually work. Not that Marcy minded; Hye kept the air light and buoyant the whole ride home. Had it just been him and Sunny, no doubt there would’ve been some kind of earful, perhaps to scold Marcy for coming in to work, perhaps to explain how Marcy should take better care of himself.

Instead, he got to listen to Hye talk about unicorns and how they couldn’t wear hats for five whole minutes, until Sunny pulled up to the driveway at the Ross house.

Hye gasped as he smushed his face against the window glass on the passenger side. “Aww, it’s so little! And yellow!”

That was right; they’d never been to his house before. But little? Marcy’d never thought of home that way. He supposed it wasn’t the largest house on the block, but he’d never considered it ‘little’. What exactly was Hye comparing it to?

“It’s not that small,” Marcy said, and the syllable grated over his vocal chords with a stunning sharpness, which made him grimace. Was that simply from a few blocks of silence? He attempted to swallow down the burning lump in the back of his throat, and only succeeded in making it worse.

He just needed a glass of water, that was all. He tugged on the latch, attempting to open the door. It wouldn’t open. Was it locked? “Um… thanks for the ride.” He cleared his throat to try and sound a little less hoarse, flinching at the resulting stab of burning pain. “Can you unlock…?”

“Yes,” said Sunny, glancing back through the rearview mirror. “Just let me park.”

“Park?”

“Mmhm. We still need to get your bike, don’t forget.”

Marcy tried not to let the sigh wheeze too loudly through his nose, which was harder than expected when every breath sounded twice as loud in his ears today. “I can get it…” He was fairly certain that when Sam sent them out, he intended for it to be a quick trip. And Marcy really didn’t need to be coddled like this, either. It wasn’t as if the bike was all that heavy; he carted it to and from school and work every day. It wasn’t out of reach, it was simply strapped to the bumper. All he needed to do was unhook a few bungee cords and he’d be fine. It was fine.

Sunny pulled up to the garage doors and parked. Hye bolted out of the passenger side before the key was even out of the ignition. Worried that the werewolf would go for the bike despite what he’d said, Marcy hurried to jump out of the back seat and into the thin winter sunlight.

Which proved to be a very poor decision. The moment Marcy was upright, a wave of vertigo swam over his body and brain, sending him back against the door frame to keep from toppling over. He blinked away from the sky, the strangely vibrant colors and glaring sunlight, found a patch of shade under the oak tree to stare, where the light didn’t reflect so badly off the snow. He held still there, staring and breathing slowly, hoping the strange moment would pass as quickly as it had come. 

Where on earth had that come from? That couldn’t be the cold. That hadn’t happened to him all day!

When Sunny came around the front of the car, Marcy could tell from his look of concern that he’d seen whatever it was that just happened. Marcy opened his mouth to object to whatever ideas the elf might be getting, but Sunny spoke first.

“Hye’s got the bike. Let’s get you inside,” said the elf, swinging an open hand to gesture to the front door that lay awaiting them.

 _He has the bike, he says._ And what did he think Hye would do with it? How could he even know where to put it? Wait, no, Marcy never put it away anyway; it wouldn’t matter where Hye put it. Never mind. 

“I’m fine,” he replied. “I can make it from here.”

“I’d feel better if I made sure.” Sunny eyed him, earnest but suspicious. “You need rest.”

Marcy barely resisted a roll of his eyes and moved to wave away the concern, well-meaning as it was. “I’m _fine_ , I said. I’m just gonna chill, maybe have a Fizz, play some—” Something caught in his throat mid-word and wrenched all the air out of his lungs in one impressive coughing fit. He flung a hand over his mouth, twisted his face as the hacking tore new paths of pain across the back of his throat.

What couldn’t be more than three seconds felt like half an hour, and when he finally trailed off into silence, the vertigo had returned. He stood close to the car, let his head swim, awkwardly avoiding looking Sunny in the eye. Maybe he just needed to go ahead inside. A vivid image of the plush olive sofa inside rose to the forefront of his mind, nestled in front of the fireplace and the TV, with a crocheted throw over the back, stitched with love from Grandma Sophia. Yes, that couch sounded terribly comfortable right now… Though, ideally, he could make it to his actual bedroom.

Wow, all of the sudden, his room felt so far away. When had he gotten so tired?

“Yeah,” Sunny placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, “come on. Inside.”

He trudged up the walkway at Sunny’s heels, stepping right inside each little footprint the elf’s small boots left behind. Marcy’s feet left each print twice as large, with an impressive scuff behind each one. He could barely lift his feet.

Shedding all of his winter gear at the door was a strangely arduous task and seemed to take what little energy he had left right out of him and into the ceiling somewhere. He hadn’t noticed how damp his socks had gotten on the bike ride to work and now that he’d removed them, a chill settled straight down to his bones. He shivered as he shuffled along into the living room, where the hardwood floor was ice against his toes, but the sofa looked oh-so-inviting. Sunny made sure Marcy headed straight for it.

“Lay down.” Sunny meanwhile redirected toward the kitchen, looking around with restrained curiosity. “Do you mind if I use your kitchen?”

“What for?” Marcy murmured, careful of his throat now. He slunk his way onto the couch, begrudgingly prepared to do as he was told.

“Do you have tea? I can heat some water, if you have a kettle.”

Tea. Marcy had never been a huge fan of tea. But he couldn’t just say that; being sick was no excuse to be rude. Which… probably meant that he shouldn’t just lounge around, not now. Not when Sunny was offering to make him stuff. “Uh… yeah.” Speaking grew harder by the moment, but his legs worked just fine. He rerouted, left the couch in favor of entering the kitchen space and giving Sunny proper directions. “Kettle’s… here by the coffee maker. Tea, here, corner cupboard. Mom keeps uh… green and some kinda… breakfast tea?”

Sunny, rolling up the sleeves of his purple knit sweater, eyed him like the slightest breeze might blow him over, which made Marcy want to insist he was fine despite the fact that the elf hadn’t said a thing. When Sunny did speak, the words didn’t match his expression. “Okay… green should be nice. Do you have honey?”

Marcy instinctively turned toward the pantry. “Yeah, um… here.”

The moment he stepped away from the corner, Sunny swooped in and gathered up the kettle and started rummaging around for tea bags. And when Marcy opened the pantry, Sunny appeared at his side, tea box clasped tightly in his hands.

“I got it,” Sunny said. “You should be resting.”

Marcy couldn’t resist a scoff this time. “I said I’m fine. Besides, you don’t know where anything is; I can’t just expect you to know your way around my kitchen.”

Sunny held up the tea box. “I know where everything is now. I think I can handle it.”

Though his first impulse was to argue, there really wasn’t any logical defense he could make against that particular thread. Since tea wasn’t all that complicated, it wasn’t like there was more Sunny needed to be shown. Kettle, tea bags, water from the sink. Simple. But still, it didn’t feel right to just let Sunny serve him in his own house. What kind of person would that make him?

So he sputtered, searching for something he could say to make his case. “I-I… I can’t just… you shouldn’t have to—”

The front door shoved open and Hye came stomping in from the snow, shivering and causing a general ruckus in the foyer that could be heard all the way from the kitchen. A draft of frigid wind came in with him and whooshed through the house, breathed ice through any and every open space and wracked Marcy with cold. His body jerked, he snapped his arms around himself, and not soon enough, the door thumped closed again, firmly barricading the winter outside.

“Hello!?” Hye yelled out to nobody in particular, making Marcy flinch at the sheer volume.

“Hey, shhh!” he hissed around the corner. “My dad’s sick, and my sister. They’re probably trying to sleep.”

Hye had the decency to look sheepish as he stepped into view, trailing his hands over the island countertop. “Whoops…”

“Honestly, Hye,” Sunny sighed from where he’d moved back to the kettle and started filling it at the tap. “Make yourself useful, why don’t you; come and make Marcy lie down.”

Instinctively, Marcy planted his feet, raised a staying hand into the air between them. “Hey now, wait a second—”

Without any further ado, Hye marched right over, clapped his hands on Marcy’s shoulders (which throbbed more painfully than it really should have) and all but dragged him toward the edge of the kitchen. “You heard the boss. Time to lay down!”

Marcy dug in his heels, trying to lean as much dead weight against the werewolf while also trying not to get shoved on his face. When they came to the doorway, he snagged the frame with one hand. “Wait, wait, I can’t just lay down and make you guys make me tea.”

“Sure you can,” Hye countered. “That’s what sick people are allowed to do.”

“I’m not sick!” Marcy blurted.

Both of them laughed without humor at that, and Sunny said, “Sure, Mr. Sniffles,” while the clatter of the burners made it clear he’d already set about getting the water started heating.

Marcy just clung tighter to the frame, while Hye attempted to tug him loose. “It’s just a cold; I keep telling you, I’m fine!”

At this point, Hye decided to actually attempt to hoist Marcy off his feet just to pry him off the doorframe. Which barely worked; Hye couldn’t lift him more than an inch off the floor, and not for more than a second at a time. Which meant Marcy’s other hand latched onto the frame for the sake of stability. What on earth was Hye doing?? Why was he so desperate to—

“Sunny, I require assistance.” Hye tugged a few more times, like one would on an unripened berry holding stubbornly to its vine, before thankfully propping Marcy back onto his feet.

Marcy scarcely had the time to breathe a sigh of relief before a different pair of arms, a paler pair ending in vibrant pink nails, snatched him around the waist and lifted him clean off his feet and into the air. Then Sunny starting _moving_ , carting the full weight of Marcy’s fifteen-year-old self across the main room into the living space, straight toward the couch. Marcy flailed and pried at his arms—the startlingly sturdy arms; was this elf strength? How could someone so tiny have such a vice grip?? He’d been in football, and he’d never run into a lineman with a hold this unmoving—and yet found a wave of laughter bubbling up through the resistance.

“Stop, stop it,” he stammered as best as he could, through the giggles. “This is stupid!”

“You’re right,” Sunny said. Then the room pitched sideways and Marcy was unceremoniously deposited onto the couch, bouncing into the cushions as the world slowly spun back to normal. “It is stupid. So stay. Right there.”

Though he opened his mouth to argue, he found his head a bit fuzzier from the sudden reorientation than he thought it would be. A strange weight settled behind his eyebrows, under his eyes. An itch blossomed in his throat again and erupted in the form of another coughing spasm, which he covered with his arm until it subsided. When he lowered his arm to his side again, he found Sunny staring him down with his arms folded over his chest and an eyebrow arched at him, just waiting for him to try and get up again. But with his throat and now head both aching even more insistently than before, and gravity reasserting itself like invisible dumbbells hooked on his bones… the will to argue seeped out of him with a wheezy sigh. Slowly, he hunkered down, got comfortable, and tugged the throw off the back of the couch onto his body, burrowing deep beneath it. 

Sunny nodded once, satisfied, and marched back around to the kitchen. 

A quiet calm settled over him as he stared up at the ceiling fan where it lazily spun on its fixture overhead. Further commotion from the other side of the couch, out of sight, made Marcy wonder just what Sunny and Hye were getting up to, since tea really didn’t require that much noise on normal occasions. His mind nagged him, told him he should just suck it up and help them. They were the guests, in his house, and he was being a horrible host. Even though he hadn’t even asked them to escort him here in the first place, now that they were here, every instinct in him screamed that this was wrong. This was lame, selfish, they really shouldn’t be so concerned, he was… mostly fine. Or he would be. 

But… he was tired. Very tired. If he tried to get up, how likely was it that Sunny would just cart him right back?

Probably very likely. And Marcy didn’t feel like fighting against that again.

So he stayed put. Maybe it wasn’t… that bad. Sunny had offered, after all. Which meant he wanted to, or was acting like he did; it would make Sunny happy to do it. So… he could let it slide. The couch was comfy, and he was strangely cold. He could still feel the chill Hye had let in before. He shivered, pulled the blanket tighter around him. Then, as he listened for the slow rise of the boil in the kettle, he realized he’d forgotten to grab the remote before he got comfortable. He glanced around, hoping perhaps it was somewhere close by; he spotted it on the armrest in Dad’s chair, a whole meter away, and bit back a small whine. He couldn’t reach that, not from here. 

“Marcy?” A small voice drew his attention to his feet. On the other side of the armrest stood his little sister, still in her pajamas but looking somewhat clearer than she had yesterday. Only somewhat. She blinked blearily at him, as if she just woke from a nap. Which, perhaps she did. A nap sounded strangely appealing. “Why’re you home…?” She looked him over, then dragged her gaze to the kitchen, where her eyes widened, probably upon glimpsing the elf and werewolf bustling there. “Uh…”

“Hi Sibby!” Hye called loudly, before Sunny shushed him. “We’re making tea for the invalids.”

She dropped her attention back to Marcy, eyebrows pinching in the middle. “…Are you sick?”

He really didn’t want to be. Didn’t need to be. Look how much of an inconvenience he was being already. He felt like a wimp. It was just a sore throat and stuffed nose and a cough…

But was he sick? …Okay, yes, probably. Those were all basic symptoms that most classified under the “sick” category. He couldn’t really deny that at this point and not look like a fool. Might as well accept it.

Thank goodness she sorta nailed it without him actually having to answer. Just thinking about speaking made his throat throb. Instead, he nodded once, barely lifting his head out from the crocheted nest tucked close around his chin. 

She stared down at him for the longest time, and he stared back, eyelids heavier than they’d been all day long. Why had his body waited until now to suddenly act like life had been switched into slow motion? Couldn’t it have waited until morning? 

Then Sibyl spoke again. “Do you want me to get your G-Sphere?”

He widened his eyes a little. She was offering to fetch his game system? All of it? Bring it out here; did she mean to hook it up to the TV as well? All for him?

“Uh… sure,” he croaked, doing his best to sound grateful through the single syllable. He watched her trot off toward his room with a hint of awe; since when had she decided to be so nice to him? A hurried thudding of footsteps from the kitchen followed and Hye passed through Marcy’s view on the way. Why did Hye need Sibyl, exactly?

Another cough ripped fire along his throat, which chased away any threads of cognitive function, leaving him instead to groan and sink deeper into his new nest. He could think later. Now was not a good time.

Five minutes later, Sunny approached with a decked out tea tray at the same time that Hye and Sibyl emerged from Marcy’s room with armloads of gaming equipment. A small flurry of activity swarmed around the couch, while the latter two got the G-Sphere connected to the living room TV and argued over what game to put in, while Sunny poured steaming amber liquid into four mugs and served Marcy his with a small smile. A waiter, through and through. Marcy sat up just enough to drink comfortably, propping himself up on the arm rest and sneaking a sip. The tea, subtly sweet and herby, washed over his throat and brought instant relief.

“Hey Marcy,” Hye said, whirling from his bickering with Sibyl, “which: PaoloGo or Plick Party Bash?”

Both of those games were ones they only played as a family for New Years. They were good for multiplayer, but definitely not what he preferred to play on normal days.

But then… this wasn’t really a normal day, was it? Not in any way. He was sick, sipping on tea made by one co-worker and about to play video games with another co-worker and his little sister in her pajamas.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Dunno… Sibyl can pick.”

With a triumphant cackle, Sibyl snatched up one of the cartridges between them and ferociously plugged it into the console while Hye pouted. Sunny fwapped one of his ears, which prompted Hye to grudgingly hand out controllers, not without a bit of mopey grumbling along the way.

Marcy just smiled as he took his and sat back, his tea in his lap, feeling just a little bit better already.


	2. promises, promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody has new year's resolutions, and Marcy doesn't understand the idea at all. How is he supposed to know what the best goal for the end of the year is when he's just trying to get to the end of the school year without being bored out of his mind?

The new year always brought with it a keen sense of… well, newness. 

Or at least, that’s what everyone always told Marcy. His parents, teachers, other kids at school, Father Zachary… everybody. This time of year, people overflowed with a sense of purpose and drive to “do better” or “be better” over the course of the coming year, looking out across 365 unprecedented days like one might a dragon’s hoard. Like the days were lost treasures waiting to be plucked up. Which didn’t make any sense at all, if you asked Marcy. 

The new year didn’t really change anything. The school year was only half over. It was still frigid cold outside. And people almost always lost that starstruck dedication to bettering themselves by the time January was over, around the same time they kept writing the wrong year on their homework or their journal or whatever it may be. That was just how it worked. 

And yet, everyone was always so excited about New Year’s resolutions that they treated it like some kind of rite of passage coming into January. Everybody wanted to know what you wanted to do, wanted to be, even before the clock struck midnight on December 31st. And if you had no answer, boy oh boy, the looks you got. Marcy could still vividly picture his mother, Zazzy, Rush, _Sterling_ , when he said he didn’t have a resolution. Days after the last moments of 2128 faded into the first moments of 2129, he still hadn’t fully thought through any plans or ideas for the coming year and from the expressions they’d all given him in response, he got the impression they were legitimately concerned about it. As if something was wrong, for him to not have anything in particular in mind. As if that warranted pity. 

So as soon as mass was through, he’d crawled back into his pajamas and holed up in his room. It was the first Sunday of the month, and everybody had already had more than twenty-four hours to think about how they wanted to change their lives. And he still had no idea what he wanted, other than lazing around with what little free time he had. He didn’t understand what the rush was; he had time, didn’t he? Plenty! The year had barely started, and people thought he needed to know where he’d be by the end of it? There was so much to consider, more than he wanted to; he was just trying to make it to the end of the school year intact.

Could that be his new year’s resolution? Probably not.

Since the world was being generally irritating and he knew Mom would be waiting for him somewhere outside his door, he was sticking with the better option: working toward the next level of Outlaw’s Honor. A Christmas gift, and he was already sixty percent through the plot. He was on a roll; that was good enough reason to avoid talking to people about ideas he didn’t have for his future.

“Marcy?” The barest echoes of Mom’s voice, muffled by the door, eked in past his gaming headset.

For the briefest of moments, he considered pretending he couldn’t hear. Immediately, his inner critic swooped in to tell him how awful of a thought that was, what a horrible son he was for even thinking it, and with a sigh, he dragged the earpieces off to let the set slide down onto his neck. Swallowing that guilt down as much as he could, he let the horse on screen come to a halt before he swiveled on his bed to face the door.

“What?” he called, expecting that she wanted to come in and talk.

Instead, the door remained closed, and her voice carried through once more. “You’ve got a phone call!”

He frowned at the door and then remembered she wasn’t in the room to see it. “Who?”

“Someone from work, uh. That model?”

Just hearing his mother say that made him want to cringe for some strange reason, but it wasn’t as if she was wrong. And he knew exactly who she was talking about, too.

“Sunny?” Confusion simmering higher, he actually bothered to hit the pause button before climbing off the bed and making his way to his bedroom door, swinging it open. “What does he want?”  
Mom shrugged with a helpless headshake. “Beats me; he didn’t say. I left the phone off the hook for you.”

With his West Lorian Raiders sweatpants catching around his ankles, he trudged through the house over the cold hardwood floors to the phone on the wall in the kitchen. Or at least, the cradle was on the wall. Mom apparently thought leaving the phone on the counter, a full three feet from the hook with the spiral cord dangling between them, was a wise choice; as if someone wouldn’t have come wandering in unawares and gotten all tangled up, sending the phone clattering to the floor.

Holding back another sigh, he scooped up the phone, stepped close to the cradle, and only then did he answer. 

“Hello?” he muttered into the receiver.

 _“Hey, Marcy?”_ It was definitely Sunny’s voice.

“Yeah, what’s… uh, what’s up?” That felt weird to say. Was that too casual? Talking to Sunny had never ceased to be a slight challenge.

_“Uh… well. Okay, this feels weird to ask, but you know how to run, right?”_

He… couldn’t say he _didn’t_ , but Marcy assumed anyone with two healthy legs did. Still, it was good to know he wasn’t the only one struggling to sound casual here. Was that mean? It seemed mean. “Um… yyyyes?”

On the other end of the line, Sunny shuffled a little, cleared his throat. _“Wait, that came out wrong… I mean. You did cross country? You go running?”_

Oh, that made more sense. Marcy did his best not to laugh into the receiver, biting his lips together until he could answer like a normal person. “Oh, yeah. Or, I did. We… track doesn’t start ‘til March, so I’m not… It’s too cold.” 

_“O-oh… so you aren’t running every day?”_ Marcy could hear the barely-stifled disappointment weighing down the words. 

“It’s… cold.” Quite frankly, if he was really disciplined, he’d be going to the gym every day to get in the same amount of daily runs as he had before the weather turned frigid. But so far, his motivation to actually do that was somewhat lacking. He’d been sticking to once a week, fitting a 3-mile in on (most) Sunday evenings, since Sundays embodied almost all of the free time he had these days. Making it worse was the fact that he’d actually started to wonder if he even wanted to do track once spring rolled around. Cross-country was one thing; you got a change in scenery every practice and every race. But track was just… red pavement. Straight lines. The same turf, every time. Just thinking about it made him miss his football days from middle school. Now _that_ was never boring. 

But he didn’t need to mention any of that. “I go to Xavier’s. I don’t always run.”

 _“Ohh, I see.”_ Instantly, the cheer returned to Sunny’s voice. _“When do you usually go?”_

“Um…” Marcy found his gaze drawn to the calender under the phone cradle, absently, for no particular reason. “Today, actually. Sunday evenings are my… gym day. Why?”

 _“Would you mind if I joined you?”_ Somewhere in the background, past the static silence, a distant muffled voice made some sort of quip, making Sunny hiss back. _“Okay, okay… Um, Hye wants to come too.”_

That was an odd request if Marcy had ever heard one. It wasn’t like this was a road trip or jaunt to Carnival Pier that they were asking to accompany him on; those things were fun things. The sort of things you did with friends. This? This was just… the gym. Sweat and dumbbells. It wasn’t exactly riveting, friendly outing material. 

Sunny was asking anyway, though. Why, Marcy hadn’t the slightest idea. 

“Uh… I mean, if you want.” Marcy wasn’t sure what else to say. It felt rude to decline, seeing as he didn’t own the gym space or anything. It was a public facility. Sure, he usually put on his headphones and blasted The Revenants or Blood, Sweat & Fire to pass the time. But that wasn’t good enough reason to say no. 

_“Sorry, this probably seems really weird,”_ Sunny stuttered. _“See, I wanna start running. It’s my new year’s resolution, I need to… trim down. Working at an ice cream shop does things to you.”_

Oh. That.

Somewhere near Sunny, the same voice—Hye, Marcy assumed—made another quip, but Sunny didn’t respond to this one, so Marcy couldn’t tell what exactly it was that he said. Instead, Sunny spoke again, sounding vaguely exasperated, which Marcy figured was more directed toward Hye than him. _“If you’d rather not, that’s totally fine too.”_

Marcy coughed inconspicuously, stuffing down his mounting trepidation. “No, no, that’s… that’s fine with me. Uh, I usually go around 4 PM.”

_“That works. You said Xavier’s?”_

“Y-Yeah, it’s down on 107th and Main.”

_“Okay, cool. See you there!”_

* * *

Marcy’s ideal workout was a private affair. Staring up at the humble Xavier’s gym building, with old blue wood over stone foundations, watching cars pull in and out of the parking spaces out front, that felt to him like a stupid thing to expect. Who asked for privacy from a public venue? And yet his favorite thing was showing up to discover that nobody was there and he had the whole gym to himself. Nobody to notice him or attempt to start up any conversation; nobody to make him feel rude for blocking out the world with his headphones. 

Somehow though, the idea that he would have a few friends present this time felt even worse than random strangers. Which made no sense; his logical brain told him he had no reason to be nervous, no reason to feel intimidated by this last-minute meet-up. What was he afraid of? He didn’t know, but he had a knot in the pit of his stomach that wasn’t going away and it got worse the longer he waited outside for Sunny and Hye to show up. 

Yet, he kept waiting. The idea of going ahead inside also felt rude, and that was the worse option. Besides, he didn’t know how familiar they were with Bushfort. He needed to act as a landmark that they could spot from the street. No matter how cold it was.

It was 4:06 when he heard someone hollering his name through the winter chill from down the empty street. He raised his head from his hunched shoulders.

From further down Main Street, Hye—who had both hands waving frantically in the air—and Sunny came marching up the sidewalk, bundled up in their usual winter layers, Sunny’s white marshmallow parka and Hye’s long navy trench and matching shoulder bag. He’d never seen either of them wear sweatpants before, but there they were, Hye’s in royal blue and Sunny’s a deep purple. No clip-clop followed them for the first time in… Actually, Marcy couldn’t remember the last time Sunny hadn’t worn heels of some sort. But then, heels weren’t very practical for gym day. 

Marcy raised one hand in a small return wave and waited until they were just a couple meters away to actually greet them, since he had no plans to match Hye’s vocal enthusiasm. 

“—just how it works,” Sunny was saying as they came within earshot. “It’s about… self-improvement.”

“Skydiving is self-improvement.”

“Is it now?”

And then they were in front of him, and Sunny looked from Hye to Marcy with an instant change in expression, from stern to his practiced smile. “Hi!”

Marcy glanced between them, curiosity a little piqued by Hye’s strange claim but the pit in his stomach advised him not to ask. So he questioned something else instead. “Hey—no car?”

Hye vehemently shook his head. “Sam said no. We took the bus!”

“Sam said no?” Marcy frowned a little. Sam’s car was basically the company car, and the only one any of them owned. 

Sunny waved him off. “He has errands to run, that’s all.”

Before Marcy could even open his mouth to say anything in response, Hye lunged for him, linked arms with him and proceeded to drag him toward Xavier’s front door. “It’s cold! Inside, please.”

That was totally fair.

There were two dudes already inside the gym, but one was working the elliptical and the other was lifting on one of the benches at the back. They shot over the obligatory glances when the three boys tumbled in from the cold but, to Marcy’s relief, returned immediately to their business without any lingering attention. The television suspended on the wall displayed sweeping shots of a basketball court and scrambling players in purple and blue jerseys, the voice of the commentators barely coherent above the feed from the crowd through the television speakers. Tall windows swept from wall to wall on the west and north sides, letting in the afternoon sun in thin golden streams that kept the treadmills and rubber flooring warm. The patches of shade cast in from the neighboring trees felt startlingly cold by comparison.

Since he’d settled for a simple pair of sweatpants and tank for today, Marcy simply shed his coat and hat, and then fetched his gym shoes from his locker. Meanwhile, once Hye and Sunny were equally free of their winter gear, two pairs of sneakers manifested seemingly from nowhere. One moment, both their hands were empty and their feet bare; the next, Hye had four shoes in his hands, and passed one pair to the pink elf. Marcy stopped mid-lace to stare, his brain stumbling to explain where—ohhhh, the shoulder bag! That thing looked like little more than an oversized purse, and it had been hiding two whole pairs of gym shoes?

Their choices of athletic wear were… interesting. No, that didn’t seem like the right word… Hye sported what looked like long-sleeve grey under armor and a pair of white gym shorts which had somehow replaced the blue sweats while Marcy wasn’t looking. Sunny unzipped the bottom halves of his purple sweatpants, turning them into shorts and revealing tights of some kind underneath. He too had gone with long sleeves, with a loose red tank over top, both cropped strangely short for menswear, enough to show about as much midriff as the West Lorian cheerleaders—with an enviable set of abs to boot. Hadn’t Sunny said something about needing to trim down? Trim down what?? They both looked like they’d just stepped out of some kind of athletic wear advertisement, as if they expected someone to pop out with a camera at any moment. 

Marcy swallowed down the word “excessive” when it jumped to mind and turned his attention back to his shoes. The last thing he needed was to be caught staring.

Hye’s sudden gasp made him snap his head back up again.

The werewolf gestured toward him dramatically, arms open wide and flailing. “The shoulders are revealed!”

Marcy’s face twitched with a pulse of confusion, his gaze darting on instinct to his right like perhaps whatever Hye was indicating might be behind him. There was nothing there but stoic black lockers and a bench, so that couldn’t be it. “Uh… what?”

Open hands turned to pointed index fingers and Hye bounded over to him, gesturing none-too-clearly at Marcy’s left shoulder. “Shoulders!”

Marcy looked, as best he could. Was there something on him? Nothing but the plain, slightly freckled, familiar surface of his arm met him there. “Uh-huh…?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you in a tank,” Hye finally explained, dropping the drama along with his hands. “You always wear t-shirts. Baggy t-shirts too; you never show off.”  
Why would he want to show off? He had no reason to. In fact, it was quite the opposite. If he’d just worn one of his usual tees, Hye never would have said anything and he and Sunny wouldn’t be eyeballing him right now. He didn’t understand why they found this so interesting anyway. He shrunk into himself a little, as subtly as he could with Hye staring him down. “Well, yeah… I just… threw it on.”

Then Hye’s hands, still gloved, were wrapped around his bicep, tugging. “Up, up, lemme see!”

“Wh-What—no—Hye—” For the briefest span of two seconds, Marcy leaned his weight against Hye’s incessant pulling. He didn’t feel like being examined, and didn’t understand why Hye was even asking. What was there to look at? One glance toward Sunny, who’s eyebrows were furrowed ever so slightly at the center, lips pursed—impatience—and the fight all but abandoned him.

This was Hye. The quickest way to release was to just go along with it and let him do whatever it was he insisted upon doing. So he sighed and allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. At least he’d finished lacing his shoes; as soon as Hye was done, they could get straight to what they actually came for.

Hye spun a circle around Marcy where he stood, moving his arms this way and that, seemingly random places. “Nice, nice. You’re so elegant!”

At that, Marcy couldn’t bite back the cringe. That was certainly the last word he’d ever expected—or wanted—to hear. Elegant? That was no compliment, however Hye meant it. Marcy wasn’t even sure it was accurate, either. He’d been slacking off; he knew that, he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t. His arms had about as much definition as fettuccine noodles. Since he was a runner, almost nobody noticed. But he did. He’d been in better shape in middle school.

“Uh, thanks…” Marcy tried not to think too hard about the fact that Hye was basically appraising him like one might an item at an antiques auction. He offered the thanks because it felt like the polite thing to say, even though it couldn’t feel further from flattering.

“Hye, he’s not a vase,” Sunny interjected, shattering the awkward tension strumming through the air, moving toward the door that exited the locker room into the gym. “Come on, aren’t we here on business?”

_Here on business, what?_

Miraculously, Hye instantly dropped Marcy’s wrist and darted after Sunny, attention efficiently diverted. “YeeaAAH, let’s get fit!” he crowed. 

Marcy got the lurking feeling that neither of them was used to working out. At all. Though… that made little sense with how Sunny looked. Then again, at this point, he should be used to these two not making much sense. 

Still, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? They were finally getting to their purpose of being here. He followed them out into the well-lit workout space, and made a beeline through the ellipticals and weight stations to reach the treadmills, all lined up diagonally along the outside wall, just waiting for them. After a few of his usual stretches (which he noticed Sunny and Hye mirroring, to his mounting discomfort), Marcy picked one of the machines in a patch of sunlight and went about turning it on, thinking about how perhaps he could get away with putting on his headphones and playing his usual playlist without Sunny or Hye saying anything. It wasn’t as if they could hold a conversation while they ran anyway, right?

He punched in the usual 3-miles at medium grade into the machine settings, hit Start, and built up to a jog, the familiar rhythm of his own footsteps on the belt surrounding him, thudding through him alongside his heartbeat. Hye took the machine to his left, and Sunny started up the machine to Hye’s left. They matched paces at a slightly lower speed, their steps offsetting Marcy’s own and adding to the percussion. He basked in the sound and the white noise from the TV, and waited. 

If neither one of them said anything, he would go for his phone. Then he could block out the world and, for a moment, forget all about track, company, and the new year. His steps could match beats with the bass. It would just be him, the treadmill, and good ol’ adrenaline.

Ten meters in, just as Marcy’s fingers twitched for his headphones, Hye reached over to wave in Marcy’s general direction from where he was, breaking pace. Marcy tried to stifle the twinge of disappointment that sunk to his bones.

“So Marcy,” Hye said, breathlessly as he attempted to fall into sync again. “What’s your new year’s resolution?”

Never mind, there went that disappointment thudding into his stomach like a stone.

“Uh…” An awkward laugh escaped him, triggering another cringe. He focused on his breathing, the cadence of his steps. Stable. Predictable. Distracting. “I-I don’t have one.”

And there it was, a blip of confusion on Hye’s face, wide eyes and open mouth, questioning. “Oh? Why’s that?”

Marcy tried his very hardest not to roll his eyes. Hye didn’t deserve that; how could he know that Marcy had heard that question at least a dozen times by now. “I just don’t, haven’t thought of one, that’s all.”

For one long, horrified heartbeat, silence stretched between them—or, as much as silence could to the beat of three runners—and Marcy wondered if perhaps he’d snapped that out too harshly. Perhaps Hye had noticed, and Hye was the last person Marcy needed to be short with. Guilt tugged at his chest. 

“Eh, that’s okay,” Hye blurted, flailing a hand in no general direction at all. “You’re smart, you’ll come up with something. Ooh, do you need help with ideas!? I could help! I have lots of good ideas.” By the time all the words had finished tumbling from his mouth, he was well out of breath and had to pause just to gasp.

“What?” Sunny objected from his treadmill. “You have _no_ ideas!”

“Sure I do!” Hye argued.

“No _decent_ ideas.” The display on the machine ahead of him seemed to have most of his attention while he paused to measure his breathing, but Sunny didn’t appear to be having much trouble with the run. Not like Hye, anyway. “Nothing that actually counts.”

Their squabbles always started like this. If this continued, it’d certainly devolve into the ‘yeah huh, nuh-uh’ spiral like it usually did. So before Hye could generate a response to this criticism, Marcy spoke up again over their strides. “Thanks but… honestly, I don’t know if I even wanna do it. The whole resolution thing. I just… don’t get it.”

Now it was Sunny’s turn to look across the trio with his eyes oozing confusion. “What don’t you get?”

Finding the little blinking light marking his progress on the machine display in front of him, Marcy fixated on it. He tried matching his pace to its pulse. “It’s not like I know what this year’s gonna look like. It’s a long time. A lot can happen in a year. How am I supposed to just know what the best goal to pick is?”

Everybody always picked such big, noble things. This person wanted to control their temper; that person wanted to donate more to charity. Another could want to travel more, or get more involved with the community. Marcy didn’t have any goals like that, nor was he really interested in them. Did that make him wrong somehow? Was he… narrow-minded? Selfish? Lazy?

“You make some good points.” Hye’s voice cut through the rhythm of his footsteps and thoughts, out of breath but certainly not out of volume. “You might be overthinking it though.”

_Overthinking?_

“I don’t know,” said Sunny. “I think it’s that very reason why you should take resolutions seriously. They’re supposed to be. They’re meant to be goals we set for ourselves to… better ourselves, I guess. To become better or make the world better.”

“And who said they hafta be that?” Hye punched one of the buttons on his display, and the belt slowed ever so slightly. “Who decides what ‘better’ means?”

Sunny’s frown deepened, like he wasn’t sure how to respond right away. “That’s… everybody. The things everybody picks. They always have the same things in common; it’s people deciding to fix something about themselves or to put something positive out into the world.”

“People aren’t broken things,” Hye said curtly, “and having fun, like skydiving, puts something positive out into the world.”

Sunny’s voice was firm in response, if not slightly shaky. “Going skydiving is _not_ a new year’s resolution, Hye.” 

Skydiving… was that what Hye had been talking about outside?

“Says who?” Hye slowed down his treadmill a little bit more, taking deep breaths in and out through his mouth.

“Most people,” Sunny huffed. “Now, spending less on frivolous things? That’s a resolution.”

“I don’t spend on frivolous things!”

“Hye, you didn’t even remember that you owned those sneakers this morning. You didn’t even take the tags off.”

“That’s just one thing.”

“I can list more.”

They were back to making no sense. Still… Marcy could think about some things.

Maybe there was more than one way to look at new year’s resolutions. Some people could see them like Sunny did, like endeavors of honor or integrity. Landmarks to strive for, badges of honor to earn. It carried with it a sense of prestige and chivalry, but also loomed with a greater risk, higher stakes, steeper losses if you couldn’t live up to your own expectations. Nobody liked to fall short of their own goals, especially after the hype of the new year, when they went around telling everybody who asked of their grand plans. If you fell apart six weeks in, you looked like a fool. You became the butt of your own joke. 

But then, there was Hye, who claimed that method was overcomplicated. Was he right? And his questions held some merit. The only reason anybody had any ideas of what ‘better’ meant was because everybody else agreed. Which was a strange thought that felt too big for Marcy’s head, and yet, he couldn’t say it was wrong. And that was a somewhat silly idea to apply to new year’s resolutions. Why pivot your own life decisions off standards set by a bunch of people parroting each other?

Who said skydiving couldn’t be a new year’s resolution?

So Marcy thought of himself. He thought of the last year. He tried to think of what he might’ve done differently, or if there was anything he wished he’d done but didn’t. What did he regret?

Hye disappeared from his peripheral vision, snatching his attention. The werewolf had stopped his treadmill and stumbled off, took two steps out into the open floor and flopped over onto his back, spread eagle. His chest heaved, and fat drops of sweat on his forehead and nose glistened in the stark overhead lights and the sun streaming through the windows. 

“No more,” he was heaving, “I’m done. Can’t. Anymore.” Then he let out the most pitiful moan Marcy had ever heard.

No, he was most definitely not used to working out.

Marcy tried his best not to grin, and barely succeeded. He certainly didn’t regret taking that job at Hambleton’s. That was out of the question.

 _Regrets… well, track._ His sports experience had been far from what he’d thought it’d be when the year started. 

The man from the weights, who’d moved to one of the stations, appeared to be wrapping up his routine, gathering up his water bottle and towel and eyeing Hye on his way toward the locker room, amusement in the quirk of the corners of his mouth. He seemed vaguely familiar, like Marcy had seen him around before; a giant of a man—or, elf, by his ears—with long black hair and tattoo sleeves. Built like a quarterback, too.

Quarterback… 

He found his gaze drawn to the dumbbells at the back of the room. 

Sunny hopping down off his machine disrupted his line of sight. Marcy blinked, watched the elf try to nudge Hye into getting up, and swallowed a giggle at the whine that elicited from Hye’s mouth.

Marcy glanced at his treadmill display. He hadn’t even reached the two-mile mark. He hit the Stop button.

“I think,” he said when he shuffled up alongside Sunny and their fallen comrade, “I have an idea.”

Hye instantly raised his head. “Really?”

While Sunny rolled his eyes, Marcy gave in to a crooked smile. “Yeah. I figure… maybe I’ll try to shoot for football. Which means… I need to do some lifting. Elegant and football don’t mix well.”


	3. a very happy unbirthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, life is just about whether or not you should take risks. Like when your friends want to take you to an Unbirthday party but you can't get in touch with your parents to ask.

Marcy was fairly certain that if anybody asked, he could count on both hands the number of times he had any sort of solution for bone-deep boredom. 

Actually, the more he thought about it, it wasn’t just anti-bored plans. Solutions of any kind, or really anything that required him to initiate conversation, felt like ancient demons just waiting to be summoned by the first syllable he may dare utter through his clumsy lips. Ideas were hard enough to come by, especially good ones; doubly so if you second-guessed your ability to voice them without stuttering and stammering over your own tongue like an idiot. Usually, it was just so much easier to stay quiet and let someone else volunteer to be the brains. That time at the library had been a one in a million stroke of inspiration and he’d barely eked that out with minimal tongue-klutzery. 

That was no good at times like these—when the pastel insides of the ice cream shop felt like a cotton-candied ghost town, most customers driven to hermetism by the frosty cloak of late winter still hanging in the air or riding like a whip on the North wind. He’d learned early on in January that post-holidays was the Dead Season. A time when they desperately needed a creative and confident brain to churn out something—anything!—to assuage the absolute tedium. Hye had been driven to a level of desperation Marcy had never seen from him; he’d taken to arranging a handful of sprinkles according to color, laying them out in lines on the service counter for no reason beyond the hauntingly vacant atmosphere around them. 

A stifling silence, broken only by the minute shuffle and creak of the waiters hanging around listlessly with nothing to do, consumed the diner. Warm orange light flowed in from the evening outside in big, blocky shafts that spilled over the checker-board tile and made the white look gold. This time of year, in early February, sunset came long before closing, so Marcy had to watch through the big, empty diner windows as the light slowly disappeared from the sky and plunged the city into nightlife, lit instead by neon and halogen. 

As usual per this time of day, the shop was devoid of customers; any time beyond 4 o’ clock and it was a rare case that anyone was out looking for ice cream. He’d already lost track of how many days he’d been sent home early simply because there was no business and it cost more money to keep the shop open than closed during those times. He kept expecting Sam to come out any minute and do the exact same thing today, given the metaphorical desert the shop had become.

He supposed Hye and Sunny had it worse. They lived here. They didn’t really have an excuse to quit early.

Thanks to having no one to serve, Marcy had long since parked himself on one of the barstools, where he could watch Hye complete his meticulous work with some difficulty—gloves made pinching individual tiny sprinkles something of a challenge. Sunny hovered nearby around the topping canisters, scrubbing them from top to bottom, every crevice, for lack of anything else to clean. Dori had long abandoned the counter to them, retreating from the silence into the kitchen to help Ji clean that space in preparation for closing.

“Why aren’t people out doing stuff?” Hye shattered the silence, muttering to no one in particular. “It’s Unbirthday…”

Unbirthday, the second Wednesday of every month. Marcy had never understood it or its purpose. Who invented a holiday for absolutely no reason? The idea that nobody was willing to brave the cold for the sake of frozen dairy products just for some small, pointless holiday didn’t surprise him in the least.

“Not everyone celebrates it,” Sunny replied, spraying a mist of cleaner over his towelette. “Some are comfortable just treating it like a normal day.”

“Well… I’m not. Comfort is boring! I want something to happen already,” Hye pouted. “It’s golden hour and everything…”

Golden hour or not, Marcy didn’t know whether to agree. Boredom was tedious, but the chance of going home early was less so. Maybe Sam would send him off and he could get his homework done early, since it seemed fairly clear there’d be little to no more business for a while. Then he could sink into bed and pick up where he left off in Outlaw’s Honor, trying to ambush the leader of a rival gang. Now that was comfort. 

As if to defy the very thought of going home early, the bell above the shop door gave a cheerful ring, making Sunny jump, Hye instantly divert from his task, and Marcy glance over his shoulder toward the entrance, where a gust of winter wind accompanied their visitor inside—along with the pulse of a bass and snare. It was only Giuseppe, however—back early, as the temperature outside plummeted along with the sun—dressed in his patchwork leather bomber jacket, boom box on his shoulder and a spring in his step in time with the beat.

For the briefest of seconds, Marcy was ready to sigh and sink right back into the dull atmosphere. But he didn’t have the time.

Giuseppe came in like a one-man carnival troop, bouncing and bobbing and twisting to his music, limbs all over the place with no amount of the grace Marcy knew he possessed. He boasted an expression stolen straight from every action hero on television, vaguely smug, vaguely cool but ruined by all the uncoordinated wiggling. This was not the dancer from the street corner he’d met when he first started the job. This was a clown. 

“Happy unbiirrrrth-day, happy unbiiirrrrrth-day,” he singsonged his way over, crossing the diner toward them with noodly limbs like some kind of land squid. “Hap. Ee. Unb-b-birthday!”

It dragged a smile to Marcy’s face against his will. Hye, as one would expect, exploded with laughter. 

Giuseppe thunked the boom box down on the counter corner next to the register, and added his last limb to his interpretive dance, seeming to say a whole lot of nothing with every flail. He grew more and more animated as the song went on, sending Hye further into the giggles and making Marcy bite his lip hard to keep from joining him. Sunny, grinning, hopped away from his cleaning and actually joined in the madness—with infinitely more elegance, obviously. 

Suddenly, the two fell into rhythm with the rise of the synth riff, and silliness turned to synchronization. With Giuseppe firing off random hype gibberish, Hye clapping and laughing, and Marcy unable to help bobbing to the beat himself, the two finished the song with some sophisticated footwork and well-timed spins, as if they’d rehearsed it all. The radio editing faded this song into the next, and Giuseppe finished the impromptu performance with a loud “WHOOP!” and scooped Sunny up in what was either a chaotic embrace or the beginning of a wrestling match. Marcy couldn’t really tell the difference. Hye egged them on in their little moment of self-congratulations, cheering louder.

“Been a while, man,” the ginger man said, smile bright and beaming, clinging to his partner in nonsense and wagging him back and forth. “You’re getting good.”

Sunny just ducked his head, smiled bashfully, and said nothing. Or maybe he was just waiting until the zip ride* stopped. 

After another second or two of boisterous embrace, Giuseppe ruffled Sundance’s hair and released him, only to give the empty dining space a once over, hands planting onto his hips.

“D***,” he exclaimed, voice and eyebrows arching as he took the place in. “Not a soul again, huh?” Marcy stifled a sputter. _He put on that performance despite not knowing there was no one here to see??_ How did he have that kind of confidence? 

The ginger shrugged, almost in answer to Marcy’s mental inquiry. “Eh. Can’t blame people, I guess, with this wind. It’s freezing out there.”

Hye, who by now had abandoned his sprinkles in the wake of all the excitement, deflated instantly and moaned a bit at that, ears drooping. “I miss everybody! It’s spring; it’s not supposed to be this cold.”

Marcy frowned. “It’s not spring yet.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“But Valentine’s Day is a spring holiday,” Hye argued, hands paused over the counter. 

“’Fraid not, buddy.” Giuseppe strode over to join them at the counter, easing up and leaning in on his elbows. 

“Spring’s more than a month away,” Sunny explained, returning to his cleaning towel. “Valentine’s Day is next Monday.”

The werewolf’s eyes widened with an intake of his breath and he leaned forward right onto his clusters of sprinkles, sending several scattering forward and off the edge onto the floor. One bounced over Marcy’s arms and into his lap. “I coulda sworn—! I thought, with all the flowers and everything. My brain said ‘spring’ and I believed it.”

That was right in line with usual Hye. Since Marcy had known him, he’d come to learn that Hye often forgot things that should be habitual knowledge by now, like which direction was east, multiples of 7, or what day Christmas was on. At this point, Marcy could safely say that if Hye’s brain was a real place they could visit, they’d probably fall down a hole in the first five minutes and never get out again, left for the rest of eternity with only the random bits and bobs of information long lost to the vast recesses of Hye’s forgetfulness. It was a startlingly frightening thought. 

While Marcy brushed the sprinkle off his lap—which earned him a glare from Sunny; he instinctively grinned back and felt like an idiot for it—Giuseppe eyed the mess Hye had made and drummed his fingers on the edge of the counter. “Well, I guess that makes… a _little_ sense.”

“No it doesn’t,” Sunny swept his hand between them all, gathering up the far-flung sprinkles. “Why would Valentine’s flowers make you assume it’s a spring holiday?”

“’Cause flowers grow in spring,” Hye said plainly.

Sunny sighed. “Florists can grow flowers year-round.”

“Really??” Hye blurted with instant wonder and enthusiasm, lurching up and scattering more sprinkles much to Sunny’s further exasperation. More of them hippity-hopped off the edge into Marcy’s lap, making him frown and knee-jerk swipe them all away.

Sunny finally released an aggressive hum of thinning patience. “Guys! Look at this mess!”

A glance down revealed a meter-round rainbow flurry of sprinkles surrounding Marcy’s stool. It was more than Marcy thought it would be; it certainly hadn’t looked like that much when Hye was busy arranging them all. Hye looked at his own arms, caked with sprinkles stuck to his skin, and then the counter, where his color-coordinated piles were long, long gone. 

“Whoops,” was all he had to say.

“Don’t just stand there! Get the broom,” Sunny snapped, his tone leaving no room for argument. In one of his rare instances of compliance, Hye flicked his ears back and then scurried to do as he was told.

“Wow,” Giuseppe said quietly while the werewolf disappeared into the kitchen. “You guys haven’t had anything to do for a while, I’m guessing.”

That was certainly one way to put it. Marcy resisted the scoff that built up and barely stopped in the back of his throat, and diverted the energy into a slouchy shrug instead. “I dunno, this seems pretty normal at this point.” Hye carried chaos around with him like some kind of spoiled, invisible pet. They were all doomed if they couldn’t adjust to that fact; not everyone could be Sunny.

Giuseppe laughed. “Hey, you’re learning, aren’t’cha?”

He smiled a little. Maybe he was.

When Hye came sweeping back through the kitchen doors, broom and dustpan brandished and a face like he was ready to face the final boss for this level, Giuseppe drummed his hands on the counter again and spoke louder, “Hey, you guys have plans for Unbirthday?”

Hye, immediately distracted, blurted out, “Sometimes my grandma bakes a rainbow cake and we play cards!” while Sunny and Marcy just shook their heads. On rare occasion, Marcy could remember being dragged to a family movie or special dinner, but beyond that, his family had never taken Unbirthday too seriously. It happened too often and his folks were too busy and they preferred to budget for larger holidays anyway.

Of course, Sunny got Hye right back to work cleaning up the sprinkle shower of his making. While Hye bumped the broom handle into the topping dispensers and Sunny scrambled to steady them, Giuseppe went on, “In that case, my old neighborhood hosts this thing every month. There’s hotpot, coffee, baked goods n’ stuff, and a gift game. You guys should come!”

“Presents??” Hye snapped his head up once more from his chore.

Which made Sunny give him a light smack in the side. “Focus!”

Giuseppe just seemed ever more amused by their antics and his grin widened, warm and friendly. “Yep, presents. Everybody brings something cheap or funny, so it’s more like a game than actual gift-giving. Everyone brings a bit of food too, so there’s usually a lot to pick from. We have a bonfire, sit around, make conversation, all the usual jazz. I think you guys would like it.”  
Judging by the growing sliver of teeth showing between Hye’s lips and the quiet glance he and Sunny shared, they agreed. Marcy hesitated, a slow-rising worry swelling in his throat. He kept an iron grip on his facial muscles, freezing them in place in desperate hope that he could hide it.

Of course, Giuseppe wouldn’t know why he would do so. Giuseppe was a social person. He knew how to set a room at ease; heck, he’d just done it. A cloud of casual, welcoming energy followed him around, made people like him, almost as magical as the color tricks he did to his hair. He’d certainly never seen Marcy at a party. Well, except for that library job… but that was something else. That was a job; Marcy had an excuse to keep himself busy and not socialize. The expectations on him would be entirely different this time. This time, it was supposed to be fun.

And Marcy would be introduced as a friend, not a waiter.

“Sure,” Sunny was saying. “We’ll have to find some stuff to bring upstairs first, though…”

“What do you think, Marcy?” Hye blurted, slinging an arm over his shoulders and giving him a shake. “We can celebrate Unbirthday together!”

Marcy shied away from the grip. “I dunno…”

“Aww, come on!” Hye whined, too close to his ear. “It’ll be fun! We don’t get to do stuff together enough that’s not just work. It won’t be as fun if you don’t come!”

“Better hurry,” Giuseppe informed them, glancing at the clock on the back wall. “We’ll hafta leave pretty soon, to get there on time.”

That prompted both of them to drop what they were doing—Hye releasing Marcy abruptly enough to make him waver for balance—and sprint for the stairway in the back. Hye left the broom propped against the counter, the floor still speckled with the rainbow.

Heaving a sigh and trying to figure out how to hold this new possible plan for the evening, Marcy decided he may as well finish Hye’s job in the meantime.

As he stood, Giuseppe swatted him in the arm. “So how ‘bout it, lil bro? You wanna come?”

 _‘Lil bro’_? The words rattled through his skull from one ear to the other and struck him into hesitation. He’d never been called _that_ before. He’d never heard Giuseppe call anyone that, to his knowledge. What was that about?

So Marcy stared and blinked. “…What?” 

Giuseppe blinked back, seemingly confused by Marcy’s confusion. “What?”

Instead of elaborating and drawing further awkward attention to himself—he was probably just overreacting over nothing, anyways—Marcy just shook his head and tried to move on, hopping off his stool to snatch up the broom. “Nothing, never mind. Um… how late will this… ‘thing’ go?”

“It’s kinda a come and go kinda thing,” Giuseppe shrugged, “but everything usually wraps up around nine.”

That was much later than he normally got home. He wasn’t sure what his parents would have to say about that; he’d have to call them. He said as much.

“Sure thing!” After a beat of thought, the ginger held out his hand. “Here, lemme finish that; you can go make the call, that way we can get outta here ASAP.”

Grateful for the excuse not to do Hye’s job and, with a small nod of acknowledgment, Marcy handed over the broom and made his retreat. He left the golden diner behind in favor of the shadows under the narrow hallway, slipped into the office, where the lights were off. Sam must have ditched the desk work for the evening; maybe he was upstairs working on their dinner. Or maybe he had Unbirthday plans of his own. Either way, there was no one to overhear his phone call.

He refrained from clocking out just yet. If his folks said no, he’d have to hang around until Sam told him to go home. Though, given the emptiness of the place and the fact that the boss himself had seemingly abandoned it to its fate for the night, maybe he could get away with just… 

He went ahead and punched his time card, before taking the phone off the hook and dialing the very familiar number for the Ross home phone. He’d ask Sam if he could go home early if they ended up saying no.

After seven rings, a series of beeps indicating an incomplete call screeched in his ear, followed by the mechanical “we’re sorry, but—” that he cut off with a frown and a smash of the End button. Immediately, he dialed his mother’s mobile phone number, listened to it ring. It rang and rang until beeping in his ear, and his mother’s pre-recorded voice alerted him to leave a message. Instead of doing that, he cut the recording off mid-drone and punched in Dad’s number. Once more, he let it ring again and again to its heart’s content, waiting with baited breath. Just the same as before, the rings ran out and his dad’s much briefer voice mail recording let him know that Richard Ross wasn’t available at the moment. Marcy opted not to leave a message yet again, and locked the phone back into its cradle with a jingle of finality.

They usually answered. Unless they’d been called out…?

So, he now had a conundrum. He knew that, were his parents aware of the situation, they’d probably tell him to stay, forego the event since he couldn’t obtain their permission. But…

While he wasn’t sure if he wanted to surround himself with strangers, he _was_ sure that it’d be more embarrassing to have to tell his friends that he couldn’t go because his parents said no. If it were Zazzy and Rush, he could just hear their teasing. ‘What a good little boy scout,’ Zazzy would probably say. ‘Do you need your mom and dad to hold your hand?’

He found a wave of irritation swelling up in his throat. He hated this feeling, he decided—how intimidated this whole idea made him. What was wrong with him? He had to stop; had to suck it up, be braver. He was fifteen, he was almost an adult and he needed to start acting like it.

What had Giuseppe said, all those weeks ago? 

Make them smile. Make their day better. Here was an opportunity to do that, for his friends. His parents would be okay with that… right?

The office door swung inward and Hye popped through like a jack-in-the-box, ears ramrod straight. “MARCY!”

Marcy flinched back and stumbled, inhaling sharply, away from the doorway. Hye giggled.

“Sorry,” he said. “You coming? We’re ready!”

_What do I do?_

Hye stared at him with quiet, barely-contained hope.

With a gulp, Marcy found the words tumbling from his mouth before he could think about them. “Y-Yeah, um… um…” He stared at the phone—its stone-still receiver. “Can we… stop by my house first? I… wanna grab something. For the… gift thing.”

Maybe he’d run into his parents there. Then he could get their permission and his friends would be none the wiser.

* * *

Getting permission from Sam to leave work early was the easy part. Marcy didn’t have to do a thing. Giuseppe simply vanished up the stairs, was gone for two minutes, and then came back with the word that Sam and Dori would be staying to go through some books. When Marcy asked about Ji, Giuseppe just chuckled and said, “oh, he’s definitely not coming” and left it at that.

They weren’t taking Sam’s car, apparently. Instead, Giuseppe planned on taking a bus, which meant they had to walk to Marcy’s place. Or rather, Marcy gave them directions and then took his bike and rode ahead. This worked out decently well in theory, since he’d arrive first and have time to scavenge for something to bring _and_ ask his parents if he could go in the first place before Hye and the others arrived, after which they could be on their merry way. They’d be a bit late for the festivities, but… better late than never.

Marcy sped through the streets fast as he could without risking an accident, the cold biting into his cheeks. They’d be red by the time he got home, for sure. The sun was sinking ever lower over the roofs and treetops of Bushfort. The crickets sang in pulsing chorus all around him, accompanied by the distant hum of the expressway traffic. The streetlamps were beginning to turn on, lighting his way through the long shadows striping the familiar neighborhood.

He whipped into the driveway, hopped off his bike and let it fall over into the grass, just barely. He didn’t have time to put it where it needed to be; he’d take care of that later. He sped up the walkway and pushed through into the foyer. 

“Mom!?” he called right away, taking a second just to shiver at the sudden change from the winter chill to the warmth of home. “Dad!?”

He got no answer. He couldn’t hear noises coming from the kitchen, or the low drone of the sports channel on the television. The ambiance of the house was all but dead, save the wafting trickle of tunes coming from the hallway that lead to his and Sibyl’s bedrooms. He followed it with purpose, to where his younger sister’s door hung slightly cracked. He eased it open slightly wider.

From her bed, where she sprawled on her belly with a book in front of her, she must’ve seen him from the corner of her eye. She lifted her head, eyebrows twitching down, and spoke over the music blaring from her stereo. 

“What’re you doing home?” she asked.

He really didn’t want to take the time to explain, so he just shook his head. “Nothing. Are Mom and Dad home?”

“No, they got called out.”

Just as he suspected. Fantastic, now he couldn’t ask them at all. He’d have to just… go. And hope maybe he could get back home before they did. When they got called out this late in the day, it usually meant a long evening ahead for them. They might not be back until ten or later. At least, that’s what he told himself. And, if they did happen to come home earlier, then… well, they shouldn’t be too upset. He’d lost track of how many times his mother told him he needed to get out of the house more, spend time with his friends. That was what he was going to do.

Slowly, Marcy nodded, muttered “okay” to himself, and then left Sibyl alone in favor of whisking over to his room instead. The dark space welcomed him with quiet familiarity. When he slapped the switch just inside the doorframe, the light flooded on and made him squint. Now he needed something to bring for the gift exchange; he had absolutely no clue what to pick. Or what to wrap it in. Perhaps they still had some bags over from Christmas?

By the time the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of his friends, he’d managed to dig out a set of three Drew Henry books that he’d had buried in his closet for years, ever since he lost interest in the series in middle school. He rerouted on his way to the garage and stopped by the front door to let the threesome tumble inside out of the cold, and then went right back on his way. “I’m almost ready; I just hafta get a bag.”

“Okay, I’ll come with you!” Hye announced, prancing along in Marcy’s footsteps.

The garage was the coldest, darkest part of the house—almost worst than outside, until the lights were turned on and even then, they were nothing more than a pair of dim bare bulbs hanging over the space where each car usually parked (though both spaces were empty now), casting weak light that barely reached the furthest corners of the cement floor. It was enough however to easily locate the Christmas bins stacked up high on one of the utility shelves. He’d need the stool to reach them, which was enough to make him huff impatiently. He was making them late as it was!

He looked around, across the vacant space, the oil-stained cement floor, and spotted the stool near the garage door on the left. His sneakers scuffed on the pavement as he crossed to it, and it almost seemed like a puff of icy cold rose with every footstep like dust clouds. The closer he got to the door, the more of the cold draft he could feel. Hurriedly, he snatched the plastic stepstool and whirled to return to the shelving.

Hye balanced atop the counter, rummaging around in the Christmas tub he’d been eyeing before. Marcy’s eyebrows rose and he froze in place.

Leaning back at a bit of an awkward angle just to be able to fit his long, gangly arms into the bin, Hye flicked his ears back and forth, attention divided, until he pulled back, something clutched in his hand. He twisted and held the thing out, revealing a small red paper bag pinched between his fingers, still gloved despite work being over.

“Will this work??” the werewolf said with a toothy grin.

Setting the stool aside, Marcy returned to him and smiled a little in return. It looked like just the right size. “Yeah, thanks.”

When they returned triumphant to the door, Giuseppe greeted him with a clap on the back. “Cab’s here! I called one on the way; figured it’d be faster than the bus.”

They rushed down the walkway to the blue cab idling on the curb and crammed in, with Hye claiming shotgun, leaving Giuseppe, Marcy, and Sunny to take the back. Then, at last, they were off. With dimming evening light bathing across the city, they were shuttled through the last of the evening traffic and onto the expressway to the grungy riffs of Rolling Wheels on the radio and Hye’s enthusiastic chattering. Twisted around in his seat so he could meet their eyes as he spoke, Hye could barely contain his excitement. 

He expressed specific happiness that Marcy was going, which made something coil around Marcy’s heart and squeeze uncomfortably. He couldn’t help but feel a stab of guilt. He wasn’t sure why; he was going, wasn’t he? Sure, he was kind of lying to them… but it wasn’t the kind of lie that hurt. It made them happy instead. His parents would be home late, they probably wouldn’t even ask how his evening went. They’d say ‘how was work’ and he wouldn’t have to lie, technically, to answer. Everybody would be happy. Marcy would get to hang out with his friends like they so clearly wanted; maybe he could even grow a spine in the process. 

He tried his very best not to think too much about it. Especially about how things might go wrong.

But, the longer the cab went on down the expressway, the tighter a knot twisted in his stomach. He slowly realized that he’d failed to ask just how far away Giuseppe’s hometown was. The traffic thinned, the trees on either side of the wide roadway thickened and soon hid the passing homes from view. The sun sunk lower. He watched the clock on the dashboard of the car, watched the numbers go from 5:45 to 6:12 and yet said not a word, while Hye and Sunny filled the silence, with Giuseppe interjecting at regular intervals. 

When at last, the cab took an exit—whose number, he missed—Giuseppe patted his knee, making Marcy twitch out of his stupor of rising angst to whip his attention to the face to his left. Giuseppe eyed him with a smile that barely hid a smidgen of concern.

“You okay?” he asked, eyeing him.

Marcy resisted the urge to swallow the dryness away from his throat; that’d be way too noticeable. He forced himself to nod, barely keeping himself from jittering, trying desperately to absorb the shakerboarder’s easygoing aura. “Yeah, fine. I’m fine. Just… tired.”

_Lying some more, are we?_

“Probably just bored!” Hye blurted from up front, reaching back to scoop up and flail Marcy’s hand around in random directions. The second person to touch him unsolicited. “Boredom kills brain cells. Just think of all the fun we’re gonna have when we get there!”

That made Giuseppe laugh—like a lot of things that Hye seemed to do. “That’s the spirit.”

He’d noted before that, on a normal day, Giuseppe seemed to bring with him an air of relaxed energy, the kind that let him be ceaselessly social without seeming chaotic and exhausting like Hye tended to be on his bad days. For some reason, the magic wasn’t really working now. Watching out the car windows, Marcy couldn’t really latch onto that spirit. There was something vaguely familiar about this exit and the surrounding area, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it stirred up a feeling of deep unease in his gut, worse than before. He felt like he’d been here maybe once, at some distant point, but the how and when didn’t present itself. 

When they came to the first stoplight off the exit, they turned right, crossed under the expressway, and stopped at the first light with a sign next to it, indicating directions to the nearest towns: Dumplinton to the left, and New Memphis to the right.

Marcy’s eyes widened as it suddenly struck him between the eyes. He leaned forward in his seat and pointed across Hye’s line of sight. “Hey! New Memphis, i-is that… is that where we drove through to get to—”

“The Blood Trail,” Sunny finished, since Hye just looked confused. “Yeah, you’re right.”

So he had been this way, once before. The last time he made a dubious decision thanks to boredom, he and Rush had lassoed Sunny and Hye into accompanying them to a little suburb not far from here—probably on the other side of New Memphis—where there was an entire road that was rumored to be haunted. This suburb and its surrounding neighbors, New Memphis and this Dumplinton included, nestled comfortably in the shadows of Mt. Brotherhood, which Rush had claimed was also extremely haunted. With the sun already a good distance behind the peaks, golden light flowing over them in big, streaming rays, those shadows seemed deep and dark already. And it would only get darker; he’d never forget just how empty and black the foothills looked at night.

Giuseppe’s hand rested on his shoulder, grip firm and staying. “Don’t worry, kid. We’re pretty far from Daisyway; my community’s pretty boring. We never saw anything weird growing up.”

He found that hard to believe. But at the very least, the hold on his shoulder reminded him of his dad and Marcy tried to root himself in that gentle confidence, thinking maybe it could make his stomach stop twisting in knots. 

The cab turned left, to the east, away from New Memphis to Marcy’s immense relief. They passed straightaway into what he assumed was Dumplinton, the city limit sign alerting them to its population of 811 before the town surrounded them with townhouses sagging with age. A lot of them seemed old not only in the wear and tear in every streak of chipping paint and boarded window, but in the way the houses had been built; columned porches with no railings, shutters on the windows, chimneys poking up from almost every roof—none of these houses had been built recently. 

They turned onto what Marcy thought might be main street; they drove past several businesses clustered together around what looked like a small city square that consisted of a quaint little park surrounding a stately building with a bell tower. There was a single stoplight at the third intersection, which stopped them for a whole minute without any cross-traffic, before they were allowed to proceed out of the downtown area and into the neighborhood. They passed by another several clusters of antique homes, some better kept than others but all showing the same signs of their age. Many of the yards, where the grass was dry and patchy, seemed strangely cluttered, with toys or tools or just junk in general—Marcy thought he spied an old washing machine on the curb at one point—that let the world know the houses were certainly lived in in the messiest way possible.

“So…” He tore his attention from the shady neighborhood to Giuseppe beside him. “You grew up here?”

Watching out the window, the shadows from the twilight through the trees playing over his face, Giuseppe smiled and nodded. “Yup. Good ol’ Dumplinton. Got a lot of street appeal.”

The words were said with such a straight face, Marcy thought for one brief second that he wasn’t kidding. Then Giuseppe’s smile tightened, crept wider, and his golden eyes shifted from the scenery outside to eye Marcy with a glimmer of mischief.

With a final snap of the awkward tension, Marcy let loose a good laugh that felt like it reached down all the way to the pits of his stomach and chased away most of the knots. Giuseppe’s smile split to show his teeth, pleased by the response. The tension across Marcy’s shoulders eased enough that he could finally flop back against the cab seat and end his laughter with a small sigh. 

“Yeah,” he said, smirking, “I can see that.”

The homes around them changed quite suddenly from broken down bungalows to trailer houses, driveways turning to minimum maintenance capillary roads offshooting from the main thoroughfare, where the asphalt became broken up and showered in gravel. These tiny shoeboxes showed the same wear and yard treatment as the other houses in the area, cluttered with signs of occupation. Laundry lines, children’s bikes, scattered car parts. The grass, when it was present, was in even scruffier condition here, like most of it had never known a sprinkler. 

What set this area apart from the rest of Dumplinton was the presence of human beings. Unlike the deserted city square, people wandered the spaces between these mobile homes on just about every street. Marcy spotted numerous lawn chairs set out and filled with strangers, at least two firepits alight and smoking, children running around with sparklers. Life. Which was more than he could say of what he remembered from both New Memphis and Daisyway.

At long last, the cab came to a stop on a street corner, next to a little yellow trailer house with long dry grass growing up along the foundation.

“All right, kids,” said the cab driver, “here’s the stop. Be safe, now.”

 _‘Be safe’_? Marcy had never had a cab driver tell him that before.

They piled out into the steepening cold and Giuseppe led them down the rugged road to the right, while the cab pulled off behind them. Marcy paused to watch over his shoulder as the blue car did a tight U turn and disappeared back the way they came.

There it went. His ride out. No turning back now. Not unless he wanted to bring the party down by asking to go home early, which was the last thing he wanted to do.

“This is my old house,” Giuseppe said, pointing to the yellow home, which seemed even smaller from the road in front of it. Marcy could see purple curtains in the windows, a little shed and a vacant laundry line off to the side of the yard. It really wasn’t much at all. “Aaand… this is my old street. It ain’t much, but it’s home.” Then off he went, striding down the broken asphalt toward the other end of the street—which turned out to be a cul-de-sac. 

Carting along their little parcels, Marcy fell in step with Sunny and Hye as they followed behind their leader past numerous little houses that looked almost identical on the outside, save for variations in ugly colors. A couple kids raced out from between two homes on rusted bikes, hollering as they swerved to avoid the group and laughing on their way to the street corner. A man with a salt-and-pepper beard, in a denim jacket and red stocking cap, bypassed them in the opposite direction, eyeing them up and down with bloodshot eyes as he passed. Marcy caught a whiff of something foreign—something foul. He thought he’d smelled it before. What was it?

“That guy was looking at me funny,” Sunny muttered once the man was well behind them.

“I think he was looking at all of us,” Marcy said.

“Hm?” Hye’s ears twitched backward briefly. “I didn’t notice…”

Sunny smiled. “Well, that’s not surprising.”

Ahead, tucked between two trailer homes (one faded blue and the other a muddy tan), a cluster of people idled around a glowing firepit. Some stood, some lounged in dusty lawn chairs, some stood close to the pair of long plastic tables set up nearby, where a number of appliances lined the edges next to stacks of what looked like packs of soda cans, styrofoam cups and bowls. Puffs of white accompanied conversation into the air, where the hum of it carried on the cold breeze and welcomed them into their midst, along with more of that smell Marcy couldn’t place.

He figured it out soon enough. Once they’d all gotten close enough, Marcy discovered that half of the puffs of white had not been conversation at all—they were cigarettes. 

“Sep!” hoarsed an elderly woman to their left, her silvery hair strangely short, her voice like a crow’s. “You made it. Thought you mighta got lost.” After that wry note, she took a long drag on her cigarette stub, puffed smoke from her thin lips and sunk down in her lawn chair, situated just beside the serving table, which he now saw boasted a coffee maker, water heater, and hot pot. The packs of cans were certainly not soda; he recognized the blue and silver brand as one of beer he saw sold in every gas station and corner store.

Oh, his parents would certainly have something to say about this. Marcy gulped.

Giuseppe responded with astounding enthusiasm, beaming his brightest smile at the old woman. “Me, Nana? Get lost? Never!”

“I told you he was fine,” said a young woman with vibrant orange hair on the opposite side of the crowd, standing just behind the ring of chairs, at the edge of the firelight with her arms folded across her chest, a beer can hanging limp in her fingers. “He’s not stupid.”

“What?” The woman called Nana looked up with dramatic intensity. “H**l, coulda fooled me!”

“In my defense,” Giuseppe said, crossing over to the younger woman and wrapping her up in a hug, “I’m only stupid _sometimes_.”

“Oh, is that it?” Nana and several of the other older folks around the fire chorused out a scattering of ragged laughter. One man across the pit dissolved into hacking that rattled deep in his lungs. 

“Who’re your friends?” said one of the other men, a scruffy fella with black whiskers and a ball cap, sipping a beer.

Marcy blinked, glanced at Sunny and Hye. Had they never been here before, either? Sunny was quiet and somewhat stoic, the black of his irises shining grey in the firelight, darting across the people around him. As usual, Hye was grinning and waving, buzzed by the atmosphere alone. If only that energy was contagious. Either way, they seemed as out of place here as Marcy felt—perhaps more so. Looking at them, he thought they seemed… manufactured. Which was an odd word to come to mind, but compared to the cracked road, the overgrown shrubbery, the sallow skin and watery eyes of those around the fire, Sunny and Hye looked too clean. Their coats were long, elegant, obviously expensive next to the worn, torn jackets and duffle coats keeping everyone else warm. Sunny’s white heeled boots were out of place on a backdrop of frozen gravel. Hye’s wild hair looked healthy and well-tended compared to these folks. 

Heck, Marcy’s own coat—a mock flight jacket over a red plaid fleece—looked newer than what most of these people were wearing, and he’d had it for two years. The man with the ball cap had a patch in his coat that looked like it was made of duct tape. Only Giuseppe seemed to fit among them.

“Ah,” said Giuseppe, bounding back over to them. Just him being closer brought a small relief; just not enough to stop the anxiety that was clawing its way back into Marcy’s stomach with a vengeance, almost like it was angry for having been banished in the first place. He jumped when Giuseppe’s hand was suddenly next to his face, palm up at throat-level. Like he was offering them all Marcy’s head. 

“This is Marceline Ross,” Giuseppe said in introduction, prompting Marcy to wave a little at no one in general. He wasn’t even sure who to look at. Then, just as suddenly, Giuseppe jumped to do the same for other two.

“Sundance Merryweather.” 

Sunny eyed Giuseppe’s hand briefly, but put on his practiced smile and nodded in greeting.

“And Hye Montegomery.”

Hye placed his chin in Giuseppe’s hand and increased the fervor in his waving and the wideness of his grin, showing off his jagged teeth.

Letting Hye’s chin drop, Giuseppe stepped back enough to look the three of them in the eyes. “Guys, this is uh, my sister, Catalina,” he gestured open-handed to the young woman from before, who eyed them all through a squint over the edge of her beer, “my good friend, Waffles,” Giuseppe bumped fists with another girl, with dark skin and thick hair and mismatching converse shoes, and then moved on to the old woman, who bumped his waiting fist with her beer can like a toast. “Nana, of course, and uh…” Slowly, Giuseppe trailed off and looked over the faces around the fire, before gesturing around at them vaguely. “And everyone else.”

For some reason, that made everybody chuckle again, with the exception of Marcy and Sunny beside him. Hye, who could laugh at anything, joined in with the others. With a satisfied smile, Giuseppe turned to them and directed them toward the second table, next to the rudimentary concession stand. “You guys can put the presents over there, with the others.”

The others turned out to be parcels wrapped with newspapers, tissue paper, and plastic bags. Marcy tried not to think too hard about how out of place his little red bag looked as he set his gift amongst them all and left. At least Sunny’s clean white box with gold ribbon attracted even more attention.

The things his parents would say hummed louder and louder in his head.

Over the course of the next hour, Marcy couldn’t decide what was worse. He and his friends were offered extra chairs and the gift exchange—which had already been delayed, just for them—began. The space around the fire was warm against the night, which plunged rapidly into deeper cold as the sun finished its decent from the sky; the air smelled overwhelmingly like burning nicotine, strong coffee, and fermented wheat. They were told to help themselves to drinks they wanted or chili from the hot pot, but Marcy stayed anxiously glued to his seat. Standing up would make him the center of attention for everyone around the camp fire, which became inevitable when they announced that the game would be played from youngest to oldest. The moment that Hye announced that Marcy was fifteen, it became overwhelmingly evident that he was the youngest here. Several of the older womenfolk melted, like his mother’s friends always did, like he was a toddler to be cooed at. The man who’d told them to grab whatever drink they wanted looked like he wanted to snatch the words back out of the air. 

Thank everything for Giuseppe. Marcy only had two seconds to squirm under the concentrated gazes of all present, the expectation of going first taking hold of his stomach and squeezing, before the shakerboarder gripped his shoulder the same way he had in the car and told him that he’d go ahead of him, just to show him out it worked. Returning Marcy’s look of absolute gratitude with a subtle wink, Giuseppe went over, snatched up Sundance’s present, and sat back down with a triumphant “I got the prettiest one, haha!”

“Don’t you always?” said a middle-aged woman across the fire, sniggering. “D**n peacock.”

“D**n straight,” grumbled Nana.

Giuseppe just grinned, as if the crude comment was a compliment. 

After opening the box and showing off a pair of dazzling golden earrings with dangly chains and inset pearls, Giuseppe explained to Marcy how the game proceeded—how Marcy could open a new one or choose to steal the present Giuseppe had just claimed. If the latter option was chosen, Giuseppe would have to pick a new one before the person next in order of age would have their turn. Determined to avoid getting up at all costs, Marcy asked for the earrings, with his mother in mind. At his request, Nana awed, voice harsh in the growing darkness.

“So polite!” she said to the person beside her. “Bless his heart.”

The game proceeded from there and, in the long run, Marcy counted it lucky that he’d gotten to go so soon. He didn’t have to stand up again. Though he saw several pairs of eyes around the fire fixated on the set of earrings in his hands, nobody made a move to steal them. He couldn’t figure out why, when they obviously were considering it. No doubt, these were one of the nicest things from the table—amongst an assortment of gag toys, pairs of socks, and other odds and ends. Sunny opened up a tiny antique doll with glossy golden curls. Hye scored a hand buzzer, which was sure to become a nightmare around the shop. The girl that Giuseppe had called Waffles ended up with Marcy’s books. Several times, one gift would go back and forth between two people until Nana had to bark at them to “sit their a**es down” and pick something else.

There was a joviality to the air that Marcy wasn’t terribly familiar with. Everybody knew everybody else’s names, except for Marcy, Sunny, and Hye. Smiles adorned almost every face. Every other line of dialogue was an inside joke that only the speakers understood, and laughter rose up on all sides in rhythm with the dance of the flames. Still, there was something to the air that Marcy couldn’t place. Was the wind that came down from the mountain and swept through the bare trees at the edges of the block? Was it rasp of so many cigarette-shabby voices? Maybe it was the consistent _pop-hiss_ of new beer cans being broken open every five minutes, or maybe it was the way some of the people seated made less and less sense as time passed.

Soon, all he could think about was how his parents would never willingly allow him to attend this kind of gathering. He couldn’t keep ignoring that. They’d always told him that cigarettes killed, that alcohol made people dangerous. That he needed to avoid both at all costs. And what was he doing?

Sitting in a circle of people, absolute strangers, drinking and smoking without pause, tossing profanities back and forth like they were regular vocabulary. These people seemed like they’d come straight out of Outlaw’s Honor—a band of rough, raucous vagabonds in dust-caked shoes and third-hand clothes, toasting beers to the night sky, singing nonsense and laughing like hyenas.

There was a point where one of the women at the back laughed so hard at nothing in particular that she rocked her chair into toppling backward. Amidst the ruckus that exploded around her, several stumbling to their feet to try and assist her up, Marcy gulped down the lump of cotton in the back of his throat and nudged Giuseppe’s arm where he sat in the lawn chair beside him.

Marcy tried to hold his gaze still while Giuseppe looked at him. “Um… restroom?”

Giuseppe seemed surprised, like he hadn’t even thought of this issue until now. He sat up straighter. “Yeah! Sure, uh—hey Cat, is the house unlocked?”

His sister, still lurking at the edge of the firelight, leaning against the tan siding behind her, raised her chin over the rest. She glanced between Giuseppe and Marcy, and then nodded. “Yeah, have at it.”

Her brother nodded and twisted in his seat, pointing down the street toward the corner. “Okay, you can use ours.”

Without further prompting, and keeping his shoulders drawn up close around his neck, he slipped out of his seat and away from the gathering. The heat of the fire abandoned him all too quickly and the chill of the night swallowed him up in its place, making him shiver. Away drifted the laughter, the smoke, the smell of beer, until all that was left were his footsteps, crunching sharply on the gravel-strewn street. He made his way up the block in the dark, noting that the number of people he could see around had decreased to a single man crossing over at the street corner, backlit by the streetlamp standing sentinel there. 

Not wanting to take any more time than he had to in a stranger’s house—though torn, since he wasn’t exactly eager to return to the inebriated fire circle—Marcy hurried up the steps to the front door of the little house on the edge of the cul-de-sac, tested the knob, and pushed inside once he found that it was indeed unlocked. 

The inside was pitifully small, smaller than he’d ever known a house to be, with a layer of ugly yellow and brown carpet covering the floor, a blue sofa with flattened cushions, and a lamp with a torn shade on the battered end table. The single door on the right wall most likely led to the room with the purple curtains at the front, so he assumed the bathroom was the little closet-looking pocket on the opposite side of the house, in the corner furthest from the entrance. 

Once he was finished and had basked one last second in the deadness of the air, Marcy left the sad, tiny house behind and headed back out, mentally bracing himself for re-entering the social space. He tried not to think about what time it might be, or what would happen if his parents knew what he was doing right now.

Halfway there, he spotted a man leaning up against one of the house corners—the same man he’d seen crossing under the streetlamp, the man with the beard and stocking hat from before. The man cradled a brown bottle, downed a gulp of its contents while he gazed on down the street, unaware of Marcy’s approach. It almost seemed like he was watching over the celebration going on by the fire pit. Why was he just standing here, watching? Giuseppe had said this was a community endeavor; it sounded like people were free to join and leave whenever they wanted.

So what was this guy doing?

Too late, Marcy discovered that his feet had subconsciously slowed to a stop, at the same moment the man broke his stare to look at him. Marcy’s heart lodged in his throat at the sudden, unwanted attention. There was something in the man’s face, a coldness to his eyes that matched the icy breath that turned to vapor from his mouth. Marcy barely dared to blink.

 _Just move,_ he told himself. _Just walk away._

“What’re you lookin’ at?” the man slurred. “Git!”

Marcy did _not_ need to be told twice. He sped back to the fire in half the time it had taken him to leave.

When he flopped back into his designated lawn chair, he felt the weight of Giuseppe’s eyes on him.

“Hey, hey,” the ginger said quietly. “Whoa, you okay? You’re all pale.”

Marcy didn’t trust himself not to stutter, so he just nodded.

A beat of silence passed between them. Marcy could hear Hye’s voice, loud as he laughed with some of the others despite the fact that Sunny had made sure he didn’t touch a single can of beer.

Sunny sipped on a cup of hot water, having foregone coffee and what he called “dubious tea”—as if that was the questionable drink on that table. Marcy stared into the fire, not sure where else to look if he wanted to avoid watching more drunken grins or bloodshot eyes.

“Hey,” Giuseppe said again, leaning closer. “I can’t know something’s up unless you say so, okay? If something’s bothering you, you can tell me.”

The thought of his parents loomed closer over the forefront of his mind; his gaze, against his will, darted over the numerous empty cans strewn around the legs of the lawn chairs and their occupants. Then he forced himself to look at Giuseppe and met his eyes, golden irises full of nothing but care and concern. 

Marcy swallowed. “I-I think… I think I just wanna go home.”

Immediately, Giuseppe nodded, not breaking eye contact. “Sure, of course. Here—” He rose from his seat, tapped Marcy’s elbow gently on his way up, prompting him to follow to his feet. The moment Marcy was upright, fingering the earrings in his pocket, Giuseppe threw an arm over his shoulders and squeezed. Protectively, just like Marcy’s dad would every time Marcy needed to be safely escorted from a questionable space. It almost felt like the grip was holding him together. “We can go right now. Cat!” Giuseppe hadn’t even finished talking before he guided Marcy away from the fire, the chairs, the tables, the drunks. His sister approached from the fringes.

“Can I borrow the car?” Giuseppe whispered, just behind Sunny and Hye. “I’m gonna take Marcy home.”

Though her narrow eyes, which matched her brother’s in color, flickered over Marcy briefly, they lost some of their edge immediately after. She nodded. “Yeah. Keys are in the cup holder.”

“Thanks,” Giuseppe said, at the same time Hye turned around in his seat and looked them all over with open, innocent confusion.

“Where are you going?” The werewolf’s big eyes darted from Giuseppe to Marcy and then back again. Marcy did his best to look apologetic; he’d come to have fun with them, and here he was ruining it. 

“I’m taking him home,” Giuseppe repeated, reaching out with his free hand to pat Hye’s wild hair. “I’ll come back after and we’ll go home together, ‘kay?”

Hye’s ears drooped on both sides, making the guilt sink lower in Marcy’s already simmering stomach. “Oh… okay.”

Both he and Sunny watched as the two of them left the party behind. Catalina’s car, a beaten up dark red sedan with a cracked headlight, waited for them next to the little yellow house and Marcy wondered how on earth he’d missed it on his way to the bathroom. But the seats inside were surprisingly plush and comfortable, allowing Marcy to sink into blessed quiet while Giuseppe started the engine. The clock blinked on, at 8:02PM. Giuseppe swiftly adjusted the mirrors, glanced behind them, and then pulled out onto the main street. He cranked up the heat—except it came blasting out as wind colder than outside.

When Marcy shivered and curled into himself, Giuseppe glanced over, the edges of his face barely illuminated by the passing streetlamps. “Sorry—it takes a few minutes to heat up.”

This car didn’t drive nearly as smoothly as the cab had. Its engine was loud, the chassis vibrated, the road noise was a static hum that prevented complete silence between them. Still, it was no less awkward as Giuseppe drove back through the same neighborhood they’d passed on the way in, headed toward the expressway, guided by streetlamps and the glint of the headlights off the street signs. Marcy focused on the soothing pulse of orange across the dash, jumping and warping with every passing light.

“I wish you’d said something sooner,” Giuseppe finally spoke up. The words were quiet, inoffensive to the hush. “…was it the booze?”

There was no point in hiding now. Marcy nodded carefully.

“I see…”

Marcy had no idea what to say. He had a squall of guilt drawing up battle lines within himself, tightening his chest. Should he feel bad for going without securing his parents’ permission, or for disappointing his friends? How about for inconveniencing Giuseppe? Was he a coward for not saying anything about his discomfort or for being uncomfortable in the first place?

Giuseppe, after a pause, tsked and shook his head. “Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think to warn you, I just… spaced. I’m so used to it, it didn’t even cross my mind, and that’s on me.”

He was… apologizing?

What did Giuseppe have to apologize for? Marcy was the one who made all the dumb decisions to begin with and got himself into this mess. Giuseppe may not have brought it up, but Marcy didn’t even think to ask. He didn’t know people like that; they had communion at church and he was fairly certain he knew some who drank champagne at weddings, but other than that, nobody he knew had ever consumed beer after beer like that. And forget cigarettes. His parents, everyone at church, even if you wanted to risk your health and smoke them, you’d be hard pressed to get away with it without earning disapproving stares every Sunday. He thought maybe Zazzy’s dad smoked, since Zazzy smelled like it a lot, but that was one person and everybody talked about it like it was a bad thing.

Plus, there was something about the people around the fire… something he couldn’t pinpoint, but something that added a whole second layer to his discomfort and he felt like an idiot for not being able to say why. Something about the place felt… heavy. Which made no sense at all; it was just a neighborhood, just a bunch of trailer homes.

Giuseppe had nothing to be sorry for. It was all in Marcy’s head. 

“No, I just…” Marcy fumbled for words. “I don’t… It’s my fault. It’s… probably karma. I didn’t exactly… have permission to go anyways.”

A frown drew Giuseppe’s eyebrows into a knot. “What do you mean? I thought you let your folks know where you’d be.”

“I… couldn’t get a hold of them. They’re out on calls. So I thought… I could just go.”

Realization dawned on his face slowly, with a subtle widening of his golden eyes. “Ohhh, okay…”

One second, two seconds, several seconds of silence stretched out around them, the hum of the car carrying it as the heater finally started doing its job. It broke when Giuseppe hit the turn signal— _tick tick tick_ —onto the ramp that would take them onto the expressway, where the river of red taillights waited to suck them in. 

“Well,” Giuseppe finally said, “that’s still on me. I could’ve asked and I didn’t. At all, about anything, and that’s not cool. You’re the kid, I’m supposed to be the adult.”

That wasn’t an excuse, though. Giuseppe was shaking his head at himself like he’d disappointed somebody, but Marcy knew that the real disappointment here was himself. His parents would never take Giuseppe’s argument, if they knew where he’d been without their consent; at best, he’d get an earful. At worst… who knew what kind of punishment they’d come up with.

“They’re gonna kill me if they find out…” Marcy found himself murmuring. “I’m just hoping they won’t be home yet.”

Giuseppe huffed. “Well, if they are, I’ll take full responsibility, okay? You shouldn’t feel guilty; it’s not your fault that you didn’t know.”

“But it’s my fault that I went!” Marcy blurted.

“Barely.” Then, Giuseppe pinned him with a look so pitifully compassionate that Marcy snapped his mouth shut, cutting off the objection he’d been ready to make. It reminded him of the look his mother gave him when she was trying to convince him of the gravity of something, and yet this was slightly different. His mother’s look always made him feel silly, like a child who couldn’t understand. Giuseppe just looked… kinda sad. “Look, you’re just fifteen. Nobody expects you to know everything. That’s not your job. As the adult and as the person extending the invitation, I should’ve made sure all the bases were covered. That was my job and I missed it. I’ll take the heat for it, if your folks need someone to blame. And if they are home when we get there an-and they’re worried or whatever… I mean, I imagine they’ll just be glad you’re okay and nothing happened and they can relax, right?”

It sounded so nice. Giuseppe’s reassurances were temptingly peaceful, deceptively understanding. But he didn’t know Marcy’s parents. He couldn’t know what it meant to be the kid of a cop and an EMT. Mom and Dad had taught him for as long as he could remember was that his job, as a civilian, was to be smart. To not take risks. To know his boundaries and never to cross them. The idea that they would simply be happy that he was home seemed impossibly ludicrous. Marcy tried his hardest not to laugh, biting his lips tightly between his teeth until he could speak without sarcasm.

“I hope so…”

A beat passed before Giuseppe spoke again, quieter this time. “Just you wait. It’ll be fine.” He paused to switch lanes, and then glanced sidelong at Marcy. “For what it’s worth, I think you did a brave thing.”

This time, Marcy couldn’t keep the laughter of disbelief down. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean, coming to a strange place, all the way out here, to attend a gathering of a bunch of new people? Pretty brave.” Giuseppe smiled wryly at him through the rearview mirror. “We both know you’re a pretty shy person, so I think that’s a big step.”

That was the last thing Marcy would’ve thought. All he’d been all evening was uncomfortable, over one thing or another. That wasn’t brave at all. Unless… perhaps Giuseppe was referring to the fact that he went at all, despite being uncomfortable. Which he felt he couldn’t entirely agree with, but was certainly an alternative perspective to have.

“Next time, though,” Giuseppe spoke with purposeful pointedness, slow, like he was leading into a punchline, “say something about it, okay? For me, I’d like to know about it. I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to sacrifice yourself to make us happy, all right?”

That flew in the face of so much that Marcy was used to. Frankly, he wasn’t sure how to handle it; he’d always been taught that it was just the polite thing to do. That it was honorable, to defer to someone else, and it was selfish to value your own comfort at the expense of others. That was reality. That was what his parents expected from him.

But in this situation, Giuseppe was essentially saying that what he wanted was for Marcy to do what he wanted. Which felt completely backward. At the same time, Marcy couldn’t say “no” because how rude would that be?

So he just nodded, slowly, carefully. “Okay…”

He wasn’t agreeing to everything. But he could do what Giuseppe asked. With his smile still in place, Giuseppe seemed satisfied with that too.

After a few more moments of quiet, Giuseppe abruptly punched on the radio and music flooded the car interior, bringing the air to life as they settled in for the rest of the drive home. The beat of the drums and charismatic guitars added to the road noise, settled Marcy’s nerves. As expected, Giuseppe knew just what to do to bring the atmosphere up. The awkward silence turned to shared rhythm through popular classics. Marcy knew most of these songs; he’d heard them on the bus, or in the mall. He could remember some of the words. It set him at ease. Then, several miles later, _I Love A Good Graveyard_ by Twister Hollins came on and Giuseppe immediately started singing along. He kept shooting Marcy looks as he hit shaky notes and raising his eyebrows, like he expected Marcy to join in. Marcy certainly knew the words, but he wasn’t about to play karaoke.

Until the first chorus dropped, anyway. Giuseppe belted it out like a rock star, and the notes slipped out of Marcy’s mouth too. It was just such a cool line!

_“Now swallow this noose and I’ll tear up your heart,_   
_I’ll cut myself loose and then rip it apart,_   
_I take all those little pieces and I’ll dig a little hole,_   
_Dot, dot, dot…_   
_Don’t take it so hard, you laid down your guard and you already know_   
_I love a good graveyard!”_

His mom hated this song.

* * *

Pulling up to the curb outside the Ross house, pristine and pretty even in the dark, Giuseppe didn’t miss the glare of porch light. That light and those inside had been off when they stopped by earlier. He wasn’t the only one who noticed either; immediately, the kid in the passenger seat fully deflated from smiling teen singing some of his favorite songs with abandon, back into this locked-down shivering safe that pained Giuseppe’s heart to see. He hated seeing a light die, hated knowing that something somewhere behind that red front door weighed heavily enough on this boy that he felt like he had no choice but to become a shell of himself just to bear the load. 

Despite everything, Marcy still found it in himself to try and offer him the best smile that he could—an unsure, pained thing but a smile nonetheless, an attempt to reassure, as if Giuseppe was the one who, in this moment, needed that reassurance.

“Well,” the kid said, “thanks for the ride.”

Giuseppe didn’t hesitate. “I’ll walk you to the door.” He knew the value of backup and could see when it was needed. Given the fact that Marcy didn’t object at all, he was right on the money. 

Two car doors opened and closed at the same time, and the two climbed the long walk to what was bound to be a short end. Movement in the windows was painfully easy to see from the dark side of the glass, where a woman—Marcy’s mother; Giuseppe remembered her from a number of catering events—peered out through a set of calico curtains, twitched and then disappeared, headed straight for the door. In preparation for the moments to come, Giuseppe slung an arm over the kid’s shoulders and gave him what he hoped was a reassuring shake. He got another attempted smile in return. 

Then the door swung open inward, and light from inside streamed out over them in one concentrated beam that left both of them squinting. 

Through the sudden spotlight and rapid blinking, Giuseppe could make out the figure of Mrs. Ross, a silhouette for two seconds of their approach before the door swept to a crack. She had her hand on the knob, her eyes on them, her feet planted. Her lips were pressed thin. He found it difficult to tell if that was concern or anger weighing down the corners, but ventured a guess that it was both simultaneously. That seemed like a fairly standard ‘parent’ response, as far as he knew.

“Where on earth have you been!?” she burst, the pitch of worry kicking her voice up into borderline hysterical notches. Giuseppe blinked a few times to avoid flinching. There was no hope for Marcy to achieve the same level of control; Giuseppe would never expect him to. His mother was obviously upset with him, and Giuseppe could feel how tense he was through his coat.

“Mom—” Marcy began.

His mother didn’t even let him start. “We tried calling the shop and your boss said it was closed and you’d all gone off to some party somewhere _hours ago_! Marcy, you didn’t tell us! I don’t understand; we were worried sick, 8 o’ clock came and went and you were nowhere to be found and then we find out you went off with ‘friends’? What if something had happened? Why didn’t you tell us? _Dumplinton_!? That’s right by New Memphis! Do you remember the last call your dad got to New Memphis?”

Marcy sighed, or tried to; the breath came out sounding thin, strained. His hands came up to aid in his defense, but they seemed to have nothing to do, so he just flailed with them. “ _Mom_ , it was _fine_. I was with friends—”

“That’s not the point, Marceline!” Her eyes widened with the gravity of her chastisement, which effectively silenced her son. “Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I-I tried to call, but—”

“We were gone, and you went anyway,” she snapped. “Sibyl told me. You worried us so much, and for what—a party with a bunch of strangers half an hour away!?”

Giuseppe had to bite his tongue to keep from opening his mouth, overstepping his bounds. He was an outsider here, an alien to this world and thus, he couldn’t claim to have any say over who said what, and yet… Her words flew like barbs, slick with shame like poison disguised as parental concern; Marcy shrunk further, deeper into himself with every harsh beat until he looked like a dog, properly punished, submissive and so very sorry for his actions, despite the lack of need to be so.

She claimed she’d been worried about Marcy, yet that’s not the impression her response gave. It was clear as day to Giuseppe’s eyes that Marcy was more frightened of his mother in this very moment than he’d been of anything back in Dumplinton.

So, Giuseppe tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulders just to remind him of his presence, and then spoke what he’d planned to.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, as evenly and respectfully as he could manage, “it’s my fault. I should’ve made sure he got permission before we left—”

She cut him off with a biting stare, obviously not in the mood for listening. “Thank you for bringing him home,” was all she deigned to say. The beat of tense silence that followed told him all he needed to know.

He meant what he had said to Marcy, every word of it. He was responsible for this; frankly, he probably deserved every bit of vitriol he could feel radiating from Mrs. Ross, every drop of anger in her blue eyes. But Marcy didn’t deserve an ounce. He deserved grace, understanding. He was a fifteen year old boy with dumb friends who forgot how old he was. Hye had begged him to come. Sunny expected him to join them. Giuseppe had neglected to triple check and get all the information he should have. All of them had been oblivious to Marcy’s discomfort with the environment until it was far too late.

Marcy didn’t need to feel guilt for that. He was just a kid who wanted to feel included. What would shaming him for that do?

But her eyes hardened, narrowed, her jaw clenched, and he had to face the fact that there would be no reasoning now. She was a wall, a bank safe door, triple-locked and rigged with explosives against all common sense. Saying anything more ran the risk of creating further collateral damage.

So he lowered his head, relinquished the floor. She was the parent, here. He was just a friend. 

“Right.” He gave Marcy’s arm one last squeeze before he let go. “G’night, then. See ya, kiddo.”

He only hoped Marcy wouldn’t forget what he said.

Daring to take his attention away from his mother for just a moment, Marcy nodded in return. “Goodnight, uh…” He seemed to hesitate, fumble with a word, and then decided to go ahead with it. “…bro,” he said, with some hesitance and an immediate cringe at how out of place the word was in the farewell. But while Marcy turned around to hide his face in the aftermath of his attempted affection, Giuseppe couldn’t resist a rebellious smile. He didn’t mean to defy his mother’s menacing aura.

He was just glad that Marcy was comfortable with him.

The smile remained on his face as he made his way back to his sister’s car—at least, until he heard Mrs. Ross start back up again behind him with a shrill, “You are _SO_ grounded, mister!”

* * *

_*A “zip ride” is often a small children’s ride outside supermarkets, where a quarter zinno coin is inserted for a two-minute ride on a rocking horse or rocket._


	4. illusions of adequacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcy carefully stretched his mouth into a small smile—too big and she’d be suspicious. Too small and she’d assume he was angry. Which… maybe he was. He wasn’t sure. But she didn’t need to know that yet.
> 
> In any case, Giuseppe wouldn’t be the only one putting on a facade today.
> 
> Takes place after Low Hood, High Speed.

When he slammed the staff door a bit harder than initially intended, Marcy may have made it a little too obvious that he wasn’t in the best of moods. 

The bang made him hesitate at the door for a few lingering seconds, look back and feel bad like he’d somehow harmed the thing with his most definitely unwarranted outburst. The door hadn’t done a single thing to him, other than let him into work. If he was going to take out his simmering frustration on anything, he should have done it eight minutes and several blocks ago, when he’s slunk out of the house with his proverbial tail between his legs after the disastrous “discussion” of the morning with his mother. 

It had all started when she cornered him in his room to tell him that he was, at last, released from the grounding he’d earned himself after Unbirthday, a full two and a half weeks prior. After apologizing for the umpth time, all he’d done was ask why it was such a terrible thing in the first place, that he went somewhere without telling them, if nothing bad happened. He hadn’t thought it was an unreasonable question; he wanted to understand. It wasn’t as if he’d lied to them, or deceived them; and it wasn’t as if they didn’t have a vague idea of where he’d gone, and he said as much. 

_She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose while releasing a slow breath. “That’s not the issue, Marceline. We’ve talked about this. You didn’t get permission to go!”_

_“Yeah, I-I know,” he’d tried to sound firm without being disrespectful, “but I’m fifteen, and you’ve taught me the kinds of places to avoid, so I think maybe I can start—”_

_“Start what? Being reckless?”_

_“No, making decisions! On my own. You let me with the job.”_

_“Yeah, and we’re starting to question whether or not that was a good idea. Honestly, Marcy…”_

His jaw clenched as he stared at the kitchen doorknob that he’d just released. _Some discussion; I barely got to say anything…_ That was worthy of a little frustration, wasn’t it? Maybe he had raised his voice a little more than he should have near the end, but he didn’t think he was entirely out of line. Was he wrong?

Maybe. Maybe Mom was right and he was not only being irresponsible, but also shamefully disrespectful…

“You okay, there?”

He snapped his head up at the sudden voice. Voices meant somebody was there, in the kitchen, other than Ji, despite it being Saturday morning. Who—?

At the edge of the island counter on the other side of the room, Sam stood as an imposing figure—sort of; the mint sweatervest rather spoiled the image—with his arms folded over his chest as he loomed just beside Hye, who was hunched over, his ears pinned back. The werewolf was bent over what appeared to be a pretty little cake covered in white frosting and fondant flowers. Big icing funnel in hand, it seemed as if he was adding more, slightly off-center. Both men had paused stiff and stared in Marcy’s direction. Hye was satisfied with a quick glance, and went almost immediately back to the cake, tongue pinched between his teeth in concentration. Sam, however, was eyeing Marcy with something a little like neutral concern. 

“Uh…” Once again, Marcy demonstrated his eloquence. He twiddled his fingers, feeling the burn of shame in their tips for being so clumsy with the door. “Y-yeah, sorry.”

The stare lasted but two seconds longer, and then Sam thankfully relieved Marcy of his attention with an absent “all right,” turning back to Hye and watching the cake about as closely as toddlers watched the fish in the aquarium at the hospital waiting room.

“No air bubbles,” he said, gesturing to the middle of the cake. “Fill it in.”

Tentatively, Marcy edged his way closer, until he was hovering between the islands and trying very hard not to appear like he was watching. From this distance, he could see Hye stuffing what looked like a hole in the middle of the cake full of frosting. The frosting itself looked disturbed as well, as if something had stuck onto it and then pulled right back out, leaving an assortment of little peaks in a rectangular splotch amidst the rest of the smooth, sugary perfection.

“What… happened?” he found himself asking, quietly. _Perhaps I shouldn’t though…_ It wasn’t any of his business. They didn’t owe him—

_Mom folded her arms. “We don’t owe you any explanations, mister. You owe one to us. Who was that man?”_

“He dropped a carton of milk on it,” Sam explained without any amount of finesse. Like hefting a boulder onto a tabletop. 

Hye’s ears twitched, a bit lower, and he whined. “It was an accident!!”

“You have a lot of accidents.” Sam appeared unfazed by the pitiful display. “Which is fine until you’re ruining my food.”

With lower lip pouted, Hye sunk back into defeat, swirling the frosting tube until the hole was full. “It’s not ruined…”

“There’s a hole in it.”

“I filled it up!”

“You’re just lucky this is for Alex and not someone who’s paying for it.”

The kitchen doors swung in with a loud _fwap_ , thankfully cutting off whatever remained of the argument, and Sunny swept into the kitchen and went straight for the freezer. “Giuseppe’s back.”

The swiftness of the silence that followed hooked Marcy’s curiosity and dragged its head above the water of his funk, at the same time that Hye all but bolted from his cake post and disappeared into the dining area. Sam stood stock still in place, blinking at the swishing doorway. Then he sighed, shook his head, and ducked under the counter’s edge. 

With a glance toward where Sunny had begun rummaging around in one of the freezers, a question rose to Marcy’s lips. Then he stopped, quashed it down. It wasn’t his business! They didn’t need his questions. He was here to work, not distract himself from his morning with being as nosy as his mother’s church circle. So despite the burning curiosity on the tip of his tongue, Marcy gave himself the cue to move along. He’d lingered long enough. It was about time he clocked in and started getting the shop ready for the lunch crowd. 

Sam’s voice carried after him on the way out. “How is he?”

“He’s—” The doors fwapped shut, drowning out Sunny’s answer. And Marcy was alone in the dining space. Alone with the pink walls and unanswered questions. 

Giuseppe, and whatever was causing the commotion, must have been upstairs, where there was no chance Marcy would figure out what was so important that it would send Hye racing to meet him. He took a deep breath of the quiet morning atmosphere, centered his attention—he didn’t need to know what Giuseppe was up to; what his mother said didn’t matter—and hurried on his way.

As he ducked into the office, he caught from the corner of his eye Hye backtracking off the stairs, talking quietly to someone further up. With a flick, the werewolf’s eyes met Marcy’s and Marcy, as usual, hurried to look away and keep to himself, as was appropriate. He had to try very hard not to spy when a couple sets of footsteps shuffled past the office door and carried away toward the diner.

Once he was clocked in, he returned to the kitchen, and to many more voices than when he’d left. 

“You didn’t have to—”

“Why not? We don’t expect you to just sit there, in pain.”

“I’m not—”

“Which is why you were grimacing the whole way down the stairs.”

“What on earth happened?”

“I told—”

“Yeah, but not really.”

“I don’t need—”

“Sep, it’s the least we can do. Please?”

Quietly easing the door in, Marcy ghosted inside with as minuscule a presence as he possibly could manage, on his toes and holding his breath. He caught a glance from Sundance—who hovered in front of the freezers, a plastic bag full of ice in a nest of towel on the island in front of him—and Sam, who stood beside him, but the other bodies in the room were otherwise occupied. 

With Ji and Hye flanking him on either side, Dori seemed to be mid-stare-down with Giuseppe, whom they all had cornered against the industrial sink and by the look of his face, it was no small wonder why.

He looked like he’d been tossed into a mixing bowl and lost to the dough hook. One of his lemony eyes, the left one, bleeding blue and purple splotches across his skin, was half as wide as the other, not quite a squint but close enough to be concerning. A handsome split drew a dark red line down the right side of his upper lip, scabbed over but still raw, red at the edges, angry-looking. His clothes, a tank top and jeans—his jacket, discarded on the countertop behind him—seemed rumpled, wrinkled, and more bruising showed on his forearms, his left wrist, his right knuckles. 

Marcy couldn’t help staring this time around. _Did he… get in a fight?_

That didn’t sound like Giuseppe at all.

_“I didn’t like the look of him,” Mom said, shaking her head. “All those symbols on his coat—those ripped jeans, hanging low like that, it’s shameful… He looks like trouble.”_

_No, he’s not!_

He couldn’t be. He was always smiling. He loved people, Marcy saw it all the time. There was no way—

“Sep,” Dori said, hands raised and placating, “look, it’s not a guilt thing, okay? But you promised. We promised. We got your back, so let us take care of you, please?”

Marcy had no idea what he was referring to, but Giuseppe seemed to. It made him sigh, twist his mouth in a begrudging purse, rub the back of his neck anxiously. He glanced across the many faces around him, lingered on Dori’s, and then seemed to relax back against the counter’s edge. 

“All right, all right.” He couldn’t help a crooked smile. “If it makes you guys feel better.”

Ji immediately started moving, stepping back from the stand-off and indicating for Hye to follow suit, while Dori smiled back. “It does. Now just sit your butt down somewhere and let us work.”

“The counter is fine,” Sam spoke up, stepping back to let Ji reach across him for the ice Sunny so diligently guarded. “We don’t want to scare the three people who might come in this morning.”

The kitchen seemed to return to a regular bustle after that. Giuseppe hopped backwards onto the counter behind him, sitting perched out of the way there so that the others could move about freely. Sam snagged Hye by the sleeve and redirected him back to the unfinished cake, Dori and Ji muttered to one another in passing before the latter finished bringing the ice to its destination pressed without fanfare against Giuseppe’s face. Sunny said something about lavender tea. Nobody seemed to have noticed Marcy’s presence until Dori, after looking around to be sure nothing else was needed, made to exit the kitchen and return to the main floor. He passed Marcy in the doorway, smiled and patted his shoulder, and moved along.

Marcy caught the door behind him, just to peek out at the diner. Not a soul occupied the tables beyond—just as he thought. Letting the door finish fwapping shut, he inched further into the kitchen, closer to the man of the hour in the corner.

“Stop moving,” Ji was grumbling, frowning at the ginger on the counter.

“It’s tender!” Giuseppe snickered back, leaning ever-so-slightly away from the looming ice pack.

“It’s wrapped in a towel,” Ji stated the obvious.

“What does that have to do with anything? Ice doesn’t have nerves!”

Ji huffed. “No, but your face does and they’re wrecked, so f***ing _hold still_.”

While Marcy flinched at the advanced expletive, Giuseppe just laughed some more, lifting a hand to try and grip the ice pack himself, careful of Ji’s claws and his own face. “Okay, okay, just. Let me hold it.”

“You’ve gotta apply pressure.” Ji didn’t seem ready to relinquish his hold just yet, yanking the ice pack just out of immediate reach of Giuseppe’s fingers. “You can’t just hold it as close as possible.”

“I will! I will.”

Though he appeared dubious, his cold eyes narrowing in their peaky sockets, Ji reluctantly handed over the ice and gave Giuseppe the space to apply it, which the ginger did with no hesitation save a slight grimace. His uncovered, unbruised eye peered out from the shadow of towel and tousled red bangs and turned to a lemon slice when he grinned.

“See? It’s easier when I’m doing it. Hurts less somehow.”

Ji just rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

Ignoring him in favor of glancing around, Giuseppe’s attention finally fell to Marcy, who’d been standing by waiting for a break in the conversation wide enough for him to interject politely. The lemon slice squinted further when he saw him, and he waved with his free hand.

“Hey Marcy! How’s it?”

Just like usual. Always so happy and asking how others were doing. 

_Mom just doesn’t know him, that’s all. She can’t be right._

Marcy’s throat tightened a little anyway, a strange sticky feeling starting to simmer in his gut. Still, he sucked in a breath to answer and did so in typical graceful fashion.

“Oh, uh, I’m—yeah—good. I-I’m good.” Marcy swallowed the stutter that threatened to keep his tongue a-sputtering on like a dying motor engine. His gaze drew once more to the ice pack on Giuseppe’s face, the bruises on his wrist. Dark, hand-shaped bruises. Some claw marks down the inside that he hadn’t noticed before.

“What… what happened?” It escaped him before he could think twice. Curiosity won out over good sense. 

_That’s exactly what got you into trouble last time._

Mom wouldn’t know about this one. It wasn’t as if she needed to know every single thing he ever had a conversation about.

Giuseppe wilted a little, sighing, turning so the ice pack hid most of his face. “Eh, it’s nothing… Just a little run-in with some old mistakes.”

Ji just scoffed, which honestly Marcy understood himself but felt too rude to commit to. People only gave cryptic answers to direct questions when they didn’t want to talk about it. When they were hiding something. That’s how it went in all the movies, all the video games, all the comic books. And it didn’t feel spectacular to be on the receiving end of that kind of answer, especially when ‘it’s nothing’ was coming out through a split lip that very clearly defined that phrase as a bald-faced lie.

Why would Giuseppe lie to him? There were only two obvious reasons.

One: he _had_ gotten into a fight and was ashamed of it.

Two: he didn’t think Marcy could handle the truth.

Marcy wasn’t sure which was worse. Except maybe both at once.

He knew his parents hid things from him all the time. They thought he didn’t notice every time they talked past him and gave each other meaningful glances, but he did. He wasn’t some clueless, naive child; he understood more than people gave him credit for. He understood enough to use the same tricks on them to make sure they didn’t find out about Ji. 

Maybe that was why this was happening with Giuseppe now… some kind of karmic justice. 

On the outside, Marcy had to nod slowly, evenly, like he got it. Which he sort of did… just maybe not in the way Giuseppe meant it. “Ah… did you win?”

That made Giuseppe laugh, and then immediately suck in a breath and hunch into himself, wrapping his free arm around his middle. “Ow…”

Ji frowned. “Ribs?”

“Nah, nah, just the bruising…” Waving Ji away, Giuseppe sniffed a little, massaged his side, and at last raised his head to resume his smile from before. “Not this time, unfortunately,” he said to Marcy. “They won this round.”

‘They.’ Marcy had no way of knowing who ‘they’ were. Why had ‘they’ been fighting Giuseppe? Did they start it? Did Giuseppe try to smooth things over first, did he smile at them and try to placate them just like he was doing now? Or…

 _“You need to be cautious, Marceline,”_ Mom had said. _“You can’t just take people blindly at their word.”_

But what if he wanted to? The suspicion churning in his stomach was going to make him sick.

He tried once more to smile a little, clapped a hand on Giuseppe’s shoulder. “Well, uh… take it easy.”

Seemingly unfazed, Giuseppe just nodded, smile still in place. “Sure. Not that these wardens would let me do otherwise.”

“We are the R&R police!” Hye barked from the other side of the kitchen. Marcy looked over to see him helping Sam pack the cake—looking as if nothing had happened—into a gold paper box. “We will enforce Dori’s relaxation edict!”

While Sam and Sunny chimed their agreement, Ji dramatically rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and Giuseppe laughed some more and flinched, Marcy took a few tentative steps back, away from the others, toward the kitchen doors. They started talking amongst themselves then, small talk about the cake and a birthday and Sam’s family. He kept backing up, pressed against the doors, and slipped out.

He didn’t know why he was being so dramatic about all this. 

It wasn’t as if he was _that_ close with the shakerboarder. Though, ever since Unbirthday, Giuseppe had been talking to him more. Checking in on him, asking how he was doing. Giving him ideas for how to make his being grounded pass faster. He even brought him a burger from across the street for dinner once. But it wasn’t like they were _deep_ ; he wasn’t obligated to Marcy any more than Marcy was obligated to him. Marcy wasn’t ‘one of them’, wasn’t part of whatever promises Dori had indicated back there. 

_Then why does it sting a little?_

They’d all stood there, surrounding Giuseppe, literally cornering him with their care… not like Mom did. It wasn’t a looming, intimidating ‘care’ that made you want to shrink down until you were as small as you could possibly be just to avoid that attention. It was warm. They really cared. They cared a lot, and their help didn’t come with a price. They were there for him because they wanted to be. 

Marcy had never thought about it much. But he wanted to be a part of something like that. 

But he wasn’t. And it was probably his fault. It wasn’t as if he’d painted himself as any peak of responsible maturity in the months of working here. He couldn’t blame anybody for thinking he couldn’t handle serious things, as much as he wanted to. As even further evidence, here he was getting wound up over a trivial little secret that was none of his business anyway. 

Maybe Mom was right. He was too naive.

Maybe Mom was right about everything…

“Hey Marcy.” Dori’s warm voice swept through his brain, dragging him out from his thoughts. Marcy snapped his head up—he’d gotten so lost in thought, lingering there in the kitchen doorway—and spotted the man standing just inside the bar, wiping down the cash register with a cleaning towel. His bright eyes were settled squarely on Marcy, steady but relaxed, that minute smile of his making his face ever so slightly crooked. “Sorry about all the commotion this morning.”

Marcy was shaking his head before he could even think about his response. “N-No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” The words came out faster than they should’ve. Marcy just hoped Dori didn’t notice.

Dori eyed him. “Mm… well, since Sunny’s busy, do you wanna… prep the tables?”

Usually, Marcy just helped with that. Sunny was always in charge of morning prep and Marcy just did whatever he was told. As usual.

He nodded. If he truly wanted to be worthy of being taken seriously by them all, he would have to start somewhere. This seemed as good a place as any. “Sure, yeah, I can… I can do that.”

Minutes passed then as he set about trying to remember all the steps Sunny had always led them through. He gathered the table menus, made sure they were updated, had to make sure to check the sugar packets, the syrup bottles, the straws at each table to see that they were well-stocked for the day. If he worked at it systematically, he could be done with it in no time.

“Is Sep staying put like we asked?” Dori said from behind the counter as Marcy got to work.

“Hm? Oh… yeah. Uh, Ji’s guarding him, like a… guard dog.” _Stupid! That just sounded stupid._

Dori just chuckled—was it at what he said or how he said it? “Yeah, he kinda just… does that.”

Ji seemed just the right person to play guard dog, frankly. It was the permanent scowl. 

After a few more minutes of silence, awkward and heavy (or, Marcy thought so), Dori spoke up again, having moved on from the register to the bar counter. “Did you hear about what happened?”

Marcy’s heart skipped. He tried not to turn around too fast, tried shrugging with measured calm. “No… nobody said anything, so I… didn’t ask.”

“Ahh, well,” Dori leaned onto the counter, “it was pretty intense. We were out skating just the two of us and uh… these thugs come after us. They… knew Sep from some old friends of his that they kinda hate, so… Well, we ran and then he led them off. Told me to catch a bus home and meet him here. But he didn’t get back until this morning, so… we were all pretty concerned.”

All at once, everything clicked into place. _That_ … made perfect sense. That sounded like Giuseppe, the Giuseppe Marcy thought he’d come to know. He could just see it, him and Dori in danger and Giuseppe being the diversion just to let someone else get away. And all because of some friends he _used to have_ , implying they weren’t friends anymore. Probably because they were the bad kind of friends that made enemies that would beat people up like that. It didn’t explain why Giuseppe had dodged the question when Marcy asked, but it eased so many of his other concerns. 

Mom was wrong about Giuseppe, at least. He wasn’t trouble. He _prevented_ trouble.

“Geez Louise,” Marcy murmured. “That’s… something.”

“Yeah, it was…” With a short breath, Dori stood back up and returned to his cleaning. “That’s why we’re taking care of him today. He needs the break.”

“No kidding…”

Good. Giuseppe deserved it. That is, if Dori was telling the truth… Marcy frowned at the thought, shook it away from his head. No, Dori had no reason to lie. Why would he? About something like this? He’d volunteered the information. He’d never lied to him before, as far as Marcy knew. He didn’t need to start doubting him now when he’d done nothing wrong. And frankly, the same could be said about Giuseppe.

Shame washed over him, warming his ears. He’d been so childish, so pitifully hurt at Giuseppe not volunteering the information himself. But Marcy had no proof of why; for all he knew, he could just be embarrassed that he lost! Marcy would be. His pride would smart. He wouldn’t want people to know what went down, so why on earth had he been so sure Giuseppe would? He’d already seemed sheepish with letting his friends care for him. Marcy, as the outsider, couldn’t expect any more than that.

 _Some people,_ he imagined his mother’s skeptical face, _can be taken at their word._

_Mom’s still right about one thing, though. I am naive. Time to grow up._

* * *

Later that day, just prior to the usual lunch crowd, the bells above the door jangled to announce an arrival and when Marcy looked up from where he was ducking to grab a cleaning towel to wipe down a recently vacated table, his heart sank. In strode his mother, wrapped in her wool winter coat, with a little red cooler in her hands. She peered around at the place, slowly, more deliberately than most people did, before smiling as Hye greeted her at the door.

Marcy knew exactly why. 

So before she could spot him and before a certain someone ventured out of the kitchen-turned-lounge room, Marcy slipped through the double doors and looked for wherever Giuseppe had settled himself this time.

Marcy found him and Ji standing next to the fridges, sipping what he could only assume to be coffee from a pair of mugs. 

“Hey,” he said, getting their attention, though his entrance already had it. “My mom’s here. Just as a heads up, she’ll freak out on me if she sees you all bruised up, so… Don’t leave for a while.”

Giuseppe’s eyebrows curved up and he looked distressed at the very idea. “But! I was gonna start serving for the lunch rush.”

“That’s…” Marcy shook his head. “I’m telling you, that’s not a good idea. She already seems to think you’re some kind of hoodlum, after Unbirthday.”

That made the ginger frown, confused. “…Really?”

“Don’t ask me why.”

“You forget, kid,” Ji spoke into his mug, looking at neither of them and instead appearing half asleep. “He’s a Trickster.”

 _A Tricks—…_ Marcy straightened. “Oh, hey, illusions. Right?”

Giuseppe seemed a bit slower on the uptake for once, though he was only a second behind. “Uhhhhyyeah! Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

Ji snorted. “You’re welcome.”

“Do you have your wand?” Marcy had never seen him use magic without it; he assumed it was necessary. It would be all for naught if the wand was upstairs or something.

“Ha,” Giuseppe grinned, “I always have my wand.” 

He fished it out from under his shirt—was it…in his waistband?—and a swish and flick of his wrist sent a shower of golden sparks and flourishes of light trickling down over his head. The light made Ji flinch. As the magic dust settled onto Giuseppe’s face, the bruises, the split lip, and what swelling remained seemed to vanish altogether, until his face was as healthy as it had been when Marcy bid them good evening yesterday. 

“Whoa…” Marcy couldn’t help but gape a little. He’d never had any prolonged exposure to wizards and their skills… it was d**n impressive every time. 

“Think she’ll be fooled?” Giuseppe grinned, oozing pride in his work. Ji huffed and swatted him in the stomach with an open palm. Immediately, Giuseppe nearly dropped his wand and hunched over.

“Don’t get cocky,” said the vampire. “An illusion is just an illusion. You bump something or move too fast and do that, it won’t do you any good.”

Giuseppe coughed a little. “Yeah? Well. I doubt anyone will be slugging me in the stomach, so I should be good.”

“That was _not_ a slug, you baby.”

With that taken care of, Marcy was free to return to the front lines. He did so after a pause and a deep breath at the kitchen doors, and when he stepped out, more people had arrived and taken seats for lunch. He had to do some spying, but he spotted his mother on the far end of the bar, seated at one of the stools with the cooler in front of her. She noticed him immediately, slapped on a grin and waved him over.

“Hey sweetie!” she said cheerfully. “You left in such a hurry this morning, you forgot your lunch, so I packed some extra and zoomed it over as soon as I could.”

Marcy carefully stretched his mouth into a small smile—too big and she’d be suspicious. Too small and she’d assume he was angry. Which… maybe he was. He wasn’t sure. But she didn’t need to know that yet.

In any case, Giuseppe wouldn’t be the only one putting on a facade today.


	5. versus rex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more Marcy tries to understand why his parents are the way they are, the less they make sense. Or... perhaps it's just his mother. And having Zazzy for a friend is certainly not making it any easier. He really needs a break, and maybe Hye and Sundance are just the people to give it to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're coming in for a landing on this arc, guys... :V

It wasn’t a good sign when you dreaded the moment your so-called ‘friends’ found you after the last bell rang. 

Guilt stabbed through Marcy’s stomach along with the sinking apprehension, but he couldn’t help it. All he wanted to do was keep his head down, wish with all his might that he could sink similarly into the post-class stampede between the lockers and the doors, and yet all he _could_ do was brace himself for the impact he was sure was to come. 

Zazzy, just like he always did, came suddenly and all at once. He slung his arm over Marcy’s shoulders with enough force to nearly pitch him forward face first into his open locker; he was kept from that fate by the intensity of Zazzy’s grip alone. The blue-haired boy hooked him like a noose and commanded control of practically his entire being. He smelled like more cologne than a high school freshman needed. And before Marcy could look up from his backpack and begin to recover from his classmate’s greeting, Zazzy gave him a jostle and trumpeted straight into his ear.

“MAYDAY!!” he bellowed, the sound rattling Marcy from his nape to his toes, prickling every nerve. Instinct froze him on the spot, like a rabbit, as if maybe doing so might make the world quiet down. Free him from this moment. _That’s stupid, that’s not how this works,_ he could tell himself, and yet. Here he was.

Despite his ringing ears, he did his best to try and wriggle away from the offending arm, nudge Zazzy off him, _something_. “D***it, Tink, don’t do that…”

Zazzy, as per usual, proceeded to act utterly oblivious to Marcy’s discomfort and instead cackled at his own antics. He didn’t release Marcy, not in the slightest, but did thankfully lower his volume to continue speaking in a more reasonable manner.

“Hey, let’s go down to the pier tomorrow,” he said, turning on his heel to face Rush, who was right behind him as always. He dragged Marcy with him. “Since it’s May Day, passes are like, half off!”

“I heard they treat their animals awfully,” said Rush, hands stuffed into his jean pockets under bundles of oversized sweatshirt sleeves and stance slouched to one side as it always was. 

Zazzy scoffed. “Well, _I_ heard they’ll have some special troops in just for tomorrow night—fire dancers, dragon tamers, those people who can swallow swords!”

“If I go, it’ll be in defense of the borogroves and bandersnatches, not to feed their entertainment exploitation machine.”

“…S**t, man, you’re such a wet rag.”

The pier—they had to mean Carnival Pier. Or, well, it’s technical name was Caucus Pier. It was the biggest carnival park in all of Lore, the best place to be on days like tomorrow—at least, if you had a cool family. May Day was one of those holidays where it wasn’t usually required to be stuck at home surrounded by outer-orbit relatives that you only vaguely remembered from last year. All the kids knew that Caucus Pier celebrated the holiday best, with heaps of fresh flowers, live music, workers boasting more eclectic and antiquated wardrobes and booths selling wares to make it more like a festival from hundreds of years ago. An ‘authentic experience’ they called it. He’d never quite understood the whole thing, especially since he hadn’t gone in years, but lately the entire school seemed to be talking about going. According to anyone who was anyone, tomorrow night Caucus would be the place to be.

It was also a place his parents had a problem with, and not at all because of the treatment of the borogroves and bandersnatches. No, if he’d heard it once, he’d heard it a dozen times. The last and only time Marcy had been to Caucus had been for his tenth birthday. Dad had gotten scammed at a shooting game, Mom had almost lost Sibyl in the crowd, they didn’t like the music that played over the speaker system, and they seemed convinced that half of the rides were breaking some sort of code that Marcy had no context for. Since then, Dad had a particular suspicion of carnival workers and Mom thought a pier was a horrible place for children to run around unattended. 

Suffice it to say they’d never gone again. So, despite Sam having given him the Saturday off, Marcy had no plans.

Zazzy shook him again with enough vigor to jangle loose change from his pockets if he’d had any. “Whatdya say, Ross? Let’s go have some fun!”

If ‘fun’ meant more of this manhandling, Marcy would gladly bow out. It was getting really old really fast. Dropping his bookbag, Marcy grabbed hold of Zazzy’s wrist and at long last freed himself from the noose, shoving his classmate off with a nudge of his shoulder that came off more zealous than he intended, sending Zazzy almost head first into Rush. He felt a little bad for that, but only until Rush stepped out of the way to let Zazzy flail on his own. Then he had to suppress a satisfied smirk. 

And that just made him feel like a horrible person. He suppressed that too. 

Rush didn’t seem to have the same qualms, his amusement obvious in the quirk of his eyebrows while Zazzy straightened himself out and whirled back on the two of them. 

“Okay, okay, chill out,” Zazzy placated with a raise of his open hands and a crooked grin on his face. “But seriously, everybody’s stoked about it. We should go, it’ll be a gas!” With a wink and a waggle of his eyebrows, he added, “You could invite Sterling and make it a date.”

Despite himself, a wash of heat blossomed over Marcy’s face—which was most likely Zazzy’s exact intention. He knew exactly what he was doing, and Marcy didn’t appreciate it. These days, the mere mention of Sterling York could do that and both of his classmates knew it. Just thinking about her threw a wrench into his train of thought and made it wreck. He could just imagine it: buying her snow cones, winning prizes for her, watching her smile…

He shook the fantasies away. Zazzy was just trying to twist his arm, cajole him into going with the thought of Sterling as his companion. As tempting as the idea was, gas or not, that didn’t exactly endear Marcy to Zazzy’s cause. Spending the evening after his work shift being physically hauled around and goaded into playing games or riding rides that _Zazzy_ wanted him to, like the Autumn Festival all over again, worse with _Sterling_ watching? It wasn’t his idea of a good time. He could think of at least a dozen better ways to spend his evening, easy. First on the list being going straight to work and then straight home, the usual grind, the easiest choice to make.

But of course, simply telling Zazzy that would do him no good; Zazzy knew he was free tomorrow, he’d told them last week when the subject had come up. He needed an excuse, something Zazzy would believe. So he jerked a shoulder up in half-hearted shrug and reached for his discarded backpack as casually as he could manage despite the lingering blush on his face.

“I dunno… I’d need to check with my folks.” A repeat of February’s Unbirthday, he did not want. They’d probably say no anyway, given the way things were going these days, and that would be the end of it, dilemma solved. 

He could ask Sterling out some other time. Some other time when it wasn’t Zazzy’s idea.

He honestly should have seen Zazzy’s reaction coming, but he wasn’t thinking about anything beyond ‘hurry and leave’. So when Zazzy sputtered into a fit of chortling, he had to do a double take. 

Had he said something funny?

“Aww!” Zazzy cooed, alternating between sharkish smirk and pouty lips that emphasized the mockery in his tone. “You gotta go ask Mommy, Ross? Gotta ask if it’s okay to go outside and play? That’s so lame!”

Something twisted in the pit of Marcy’s stomach, something unfamiliar. Hot? Cold? Both at once. He clenched his teeth, hard.

Zazzy had no idea. Absolutely no idea what he was mocking. 

Did anybody, really, at this point? It felt like people had been doing this to him for ages. Maybe they had.

Marcy couldn’t understand! Everyone either expected him to be The Perfect Child or else-wise made fun of him for it. Why? What did they want from him, what did they expect him to do? Maybe Zazzy’s dad let him go wherever whenever he wanted during the day, but Marcy’s ‘Mommy’ had him on a short leash as it was. Zazzy didn’t see the way she looked at Marcy ever since February, like she wasn’t sure he was capable of good decisions anymore. He didn’t hear her long-winded lectures about responsibility and respect. He didn’t know what it was like to feel like he had to look over his shoulder every time he had to make a choice, as if his mom was right there, close by and _watching_ , ready to voice her disappointment. 

“Cut it out, Zazz,” Rush chided, glaring disapproval in the narrowing of his violet eyes. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Rush never actually made him quit; Zazzy just kept sniggering and looking d**n pleased with himself. 

_Well, screw that._ Marcy slammed his locker door, and the words escaped his lips before he could think about them.

“Actually, _yeah_. I do, Tink,” he spat. 

His heart skipped, then began to pound. What was he saying? He couldn’t bring himself to look at them, but a rush of boldness flooded him nonetheless, tingling from his jaw to his fingertips. It felt good. Kinda powerful. The sound of his voice in his own ears reminded him of Ji, of the vampire’s deadpan devil-may-care attitude, the bite in his words that radiated ‘don’t mess with me,’ the way that had made Marcy so nervous back when he first started the job. Marcy wanted to be that, right here in this moment. So he grabbed hold of it, did his best to channel that in a hunch of his shoulders and the nonchalant swing of his bookbag onto his back. 

“Now f**k off.”

Forcing himself not to linger, he marched straight away without looking back. It was what Ji would do; let his final words hang heavy like storm clouds in the growing space between them. As every new step passed without sign or sound of pursuit, his heartbeat quickened, pumping adrenaline through his body along with a chill down his spine.

Holy crap, he’d actually just said that. Out loud. To his friends’—“friends”—faces. If his mother ever found out, she would throttle him, but. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right? He’d managed to keep his vampire co-worker a secret all this time; what was another thing? Maybe he was just angry, maybe it had been a bit overkill, but it was more than worth the breath. He could just imagine Zazzy’s expression, absolutely stunned at the revelation that _that word_ had just come out of The Good Boy’s mouth.

This time, Marcy didn’t bother suppressing his smirk. It felt better to indulge in that than in the anxiety sinking deeper into his gut, like a boulder through water leaving a whirlpool in its wake.

* * *

He managed to spread the confidence thin enough to last for thirteen minutes. Almost long enough to bring him to Hambleton’s threshold but, like jam over too much bread, there was a point where it could go no further. 

By the time he reached for the back door, Marcy felt lower than the mud caked on the bottoms of his sneakers. 

What had he been thinking?? He knew better than to let his anger get the best of him like that. What kind of friend did that make him? What kind of person? He’d let Ji be his guide, but Ji was exactly the kind of person his parents would never, ever want him to be. That was in good part why Marcy had been careful to make sure they never met him, lest that be the final nail in the proverbial coffin and they ban him from the job altogether. Mom was close enough to doing that as it was, and that was over _Giuseppe_ , perhaps the friendliest, most benevolent staff member out of all of them.

If somehow, someway, word ever got back around to her that he’d cussed out his school friends? After they’d gone through the trouble to invite him somewhere? A shudder rattled his ribs.

But now, he had to step into the workspace, plaster on a neutral face and settle into work for three hours, like things were business as usual. He had to shove down guilt over how satisfying it had been to let that anger out, suffocate the life out of the little high he’d allowed himself to ride, like a fool. He’d told himself he needed to grow up, now more than ever, and now what? He was still acting like such a child. 

Something about Hambleton’s made it pretty easy to shut all of that away, though. Under the diner lights, he could forget the world outside Hambleton’s pink walls just for a little while, say ‘hello’ to his co-workers—friends??—as they bustled around the kitchen, the counter, and he could focus on mentally mapping out his tasks for the day. He could crack a smile when Hye attempted to greet him with a flying leap and Sunny had to physically reel him in. 

Even after almost an entire school year working there, Marcy couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was about the place. All it took was a long, slow breath, and he could get lost in the exuberant pastel atmosphere, friendly smiles and the smells of fresh pastries. 

But maybe that was just because he was that desperate to pretend the outside world didn’t exist. 

His musings had him so preoccupied that one minute, it was 4:30 and the next, he looked up from wiping down a vacant booth and the clock on the back wall read 7:47. Fifteen minutes until closing time. He swiveled his attention to the windows, to the golden daylight still streaming in from outside, spilling across the checkered tile, and he puffed a breath out through his cheeks. Right. It was late spring now. He still wasn’t used to the longer days yet. Grandpa always said stuff like that during the spring; did that mean Marcy sounded like an old man?

Probably.

As he returned his gaze to himself, it trailed across the expanse of the dining floor, all the tables empty save for the elderly man in the green newsie cap at table 4. The air felt loose, relaxed, enchanted by the soft jazz rippling out of the jukebox by the door. The calm before closing time. It was always the same—content with the evening quiet and the promise of the coming return home. Just fifteen minutes and he could go home and put today behind him. He’d do his homework like a good kid. Maybe he’d have so much, he could eat dinner in his room so he wouldn’t have to bother with conversation at the table…

Across the room, from the corner of his eye, Marcy could spot a patch of pink approaching the last patron with the usual _clip clop_ of his footsteps. Sunny leaned in to murmur something to the old man, smiled, and set a saucer boasting an oozing slice of lemon pudding pie on the table. The old man murmured something like thank you, adjusted the brim of his cap, and then Sunny’s footsteps came _closer_ , bringing him toward Marcy.

Marcy raised his head to greet the elf right as he stopped to lean against the side of the booth to Marcy’s right. “Almost done here.”

He didn’t know why he felt like he had to say that. It just sorta… slipped out.

Sunny seemed a bit surprised by it, his eyebrows twitching up for a blink before he offered a small smile. “You’re doing great,” he chuckled.

Then silence fell abruptly between them and yanked Marcy’s stomach to his ankles in the process. It made him scrub the table harder, if only so he could focus on the chafe of his knuckles on the laminate rather than give himself more water for the wheel of his self-pity.

After three full seconds, Sunny cleared his throat and gazed away, in the general direction of the counter and the kitchen doors. “So, tomorrow’s May Day. Sam lets us off. We—Hye and I, I mean—we always go to Caucus on May Day, so we’re gonna head over there in the evening—it’s always cooler when it starts to get dark. I thought maybe you’d want to come with us?”

For another two heartbeats, the word ‘Caucus’ bounced from one ear to the other, setting off alarms in his head until he swallowed them down, shut them up. He blinked aside at Sunny—not Zazzy—and took a precious moment to remember where he was. Who was asking. When he imagined wandering a pier strung to high heaven with lights and streamers and neon signs with

Sunny and Hye at his side, did his insides want to shrivel up?

No.

“Um… yeah, that’d. That’d be cool.” Saying it out loud, he started to believe it. Separate from what had gone down before he left school, the idea sounded… actually kinda fun. Actual fun. Not Zazzy’s kind of fun. A day to hang out with people who actually bothered to ask him if he wanted to do something. “Um… I’ll have to check with my parents first.”

This time, the words weren’t coiled with the intent of making an excuse. And this time, laughter wasn’t the response.

Sunny just nodded, simple as that. “Sure, no problem. And no sweat or anything; if you’d rather not, that’s fine too.”

“No, I… no.” Marcy actually cracked a smile of his own. “That sounds good. Yeah.”

“Neat.” Sunny grinned back, and nudged him in the arm. “Just give us a bell to let us know, yeah? Say, by seven?”

For some strange reason, Marcy gave in to the impulse to mock salute. “Aye aye!” Immediately, he felt like an idiot, but. He couldn’t exactly take it back. It was out there, and it made Sunny laugh. But maybe that was okay.

The remaining ten minutes went fast after that. Marcy bulldozed the rest of the tables, clearing them of leftover spoons and napkins, wiping away little puddles of sticky runoff from who knew what and for once, he barely cringed. He had other things to think about now, like how the pier might have changed since he last went. How different it would seem now, compared to when he was so much younger and smaller. How many rides would he be able to go this time? No way he didn’t meet the height minimum this time around. He’d have nothing holding him back; he’d have to try and remember the things he’d wanted so badly to do back then. Something about a jabberwock, and one that spun really fast… Not to mention, now he had money. He could indulge in all the deep-fried, junky fair concessions he wanted!

He could almost smell the corndogs already.

* * *

He waited until the day of to bring it up with his parents and quite frankly, he was extremely glad that he did. Mom was on duty that day, but Dad was home. Which was always a step in the right direction. He asked about the carnival when the three of them sat down to a lunch of bologna sandwiches and store-bought salad mix drowned in ranch dressing.

“So…” he began through a bite of bread, before remembering that he should probably swallow before he starts a conversation. He gulped the bite down—registering silence in response to the slip. Had Mom been home, he would’ve gotten a corrective comment immediately. As it was, both Dad and Sibyl remained mostly occupied with their own food, seemingly waiting for him to go on. “Um… Dad, some of my friends—er, co-workers, from the shop—are going to Caucus later tonight for May Day. They asked if I wanted to go with them; would that be okay?”

He rushed the words out without much thought; he stuttered less that way and stuttering, unsure requests were not what his folks needed as reassurance. Dad wasn’t on Mom’s level, but what he saw always managed to make its way back to her, for better or worse. So Marcy needed to seem sure of himself. He _had_ to prove her wrong. 

Dad used the time it took him to munch through a bite of his own sandwich to think, staring at the wood grain in the table and humming a little until he was ready to respond. “Caucus, huh? What time?”

“Um. Sunny said let him know by seven, so. I assume some time after that.”

“Hm.” Slowly, Dad nodded. “Yeah, sure, I think that would be fine, as long as you’re back by… ten?” He eyed Marcy sidelong, testing him with a beat of silence and giving him the chance to object.

But Marcy had no objections to that, so he just nodded back. “Sure, yeah!”

“And you need to have your homework done before then.”

“I can do that.”

Dad pointed at him with the remaining corner of his sandwich, the bologna flopping limply with emphasis. “And be smart with your money there. If something seems like a rip-off—it probably is.”

Sibyl, who’d been silently listening up to this point, toyed with a slab of lettuce on her plate. “Can I go too?” she asked.

Dad didn’t even hesitate. “I don’t think so.”

After they all cleaned their plates and Dad had thoroughly explained the mechanics of at least three different kinds of rigged carnival games, Marcy raced to his room and dove into his textbooks. He had chemistry and history readings and four whole assignments to complete before he could give Sunny the all-clear. He broke his pencil lead three times trying to write too fast. The speed probably wasn’t very conducive to actually learning and absorbing information or working through to ensure the correct answers, but. He had good grades. A few less-than-stellar answers over the course of a single weekend’s work wouldn’t do much to impact his overall grade, would it?

He crossed the last T and dotted the last I at 4:03PM and immediately thunked his book shut with the notebook still tucked inside, launched off his bed and skidded his way into the kitchen in his socks, going straight for the phone cradle. 

Sam answered the phone and once he fetched Sunny, Marcy was finally able to give them his final answer.

He was going to have fun this evening. More fun than Zazzy had had in mind, and certainly more fun than last time had turned out to be. 

_“Great!”_ Sunny said, voice injected with static over the line. _“We’ll come by at around 7:30 then. Uh… wear something white, if you have it.”_

Marcy frowned and then remembered he was talking into a phone. “…Why?”

_“It’s tradition! Didn’t you know?”_

No. No he did not. In fact, he’d never heard that in his life before. If it was normal to wear white on May Day, that was news to him. 

“Uh… not really.”

_“Oh… well. Now you know!”_

That wasn’t technically incorrect so Marcy couldn’t argue with him. 

After that, he just had three hours to kill. He elected to spend it exploring more of the map in Outlaw’s Honor, basking in the spirit of adventure as he guided his character over vast mountains and meadows. He even had three successful hunts and scored a three-star buck. At around 5:30, a notification appeared in the upperhand corner of the screen, alerting him to the fact that user _zazzmyberries_ was now connected to the internet via his console.

Marcy intentionally looked away from the name and ignored it until it went away. Fifteen minutes later, a second notification let him know that _zazzmyberries_ had logged off again. He continued on playing in peace, determined not to think about it. He dove into a mini-quest to help distract him. 

At some point, he heard his door open behind him where he sat on the bed.

“Hey Marcy,” came his sister’s voice.

He frowned a bit, and then jerked the controller when he almost ran into a tree in-game. “What have I said about coming in when the door’s closed?”

“The day you start locking your door will be the day I stop coming in when it’s closed.”

He sighed. “Do you need something?”

She sniggered a little. “Kinda. What time were your friends gonna come get you?”

“7:30. Why?”

“You have ten minutes.”

His frown deepened. He tapped Pause and swiveled around amidst his blankets. “What?”

“It’s 7:20.”

His stomach leaped to his throat and immediately, he whipped back to the game, saved it and then all but punched the power button. How had he let himself get so carried away!? He hadn’t even changed his clothes yet!

Just as he was clambering out of bed, the phone in the kitchen rang out its shrill call. Sibyl, still in the doorway just smirking, smirked wider and stepped away from the door. 

“I’ll let you get that,” she said. 

Of course. It was probably them.

So into the kitchen once more he hurried and snatched up the phone.

“Ross residence,” he greeted, though he was almost positive this was a call where the formalities were entirely unnecessary. 

Sure enough, Hye’s voice came over this time. _“Hi Marcy! We’re on our way now!”_

Marcy’s heart thudded louder. Great; they were gonna be those ‘fashionably early’ people. Now he had even less time than he thought. “Great! I’ll be ready.”

That seemed to be all Hye called to say because he blurted “ _okay bye_ ” and then immediately hung up, leaving Marcy to carefully nestle the receiver back into the cradle before zooming back to his room. At this point, it felt like he’d been running all afternoon and he didn’t know why; it wasn’t as if they wouldn’t wait for him if he wasn’t ready the moment they got to the door. But it really felt like he should be. So he ran. Once he skidded to a stop in front of his dresser, he yanked open the drawers and rummaged through them in search of something white.

How white did it need to be? Did off-white work? Had Sunny meant the entire outfit had to be white, or just a part of it? He wasn’t sure, but he managed to dig out a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a white tee. That made for a nice, spring-y outfit, right? He kicked his door shut, traded out his jeans and Ten Times Stupid tee in favor of the new outfit, and snatched up his red pinstriped jersey to go over the top. He could always ditch it if _everything_ had to be white. After buttoning just the bottom two buttons, he flattened himself at the side of his bed so he could reach underneath and spelunk for his sandals. 

Five minutes, an increasing heart rate and a relocating of every object to the middle of the floor later, he had to abandon the bed and go searching for them in the foyer. As he was nudging aside various pairs of stacked family shoes under the coat rack, Sibyl approached from her room and leaned against the wall, folding her skinny arms. 

“Bring me a prize?” she asked hopefully.

The bluntness of her request made him smile a little, despite his rush. “I can try? I might not win anything.”

“You’re good at everything. You’ll win _something_.”

At last, he found the sandals, squished under a pair of Mom’s muddy gardening galoshes. “I don’t know about that—”

“They’re here.”

He paused mid-insertion of his foot into one shoe and looked over his shoulder at her; she had her gaze fixed on one of the narrow windows next to the door, so he turned his attention toward that instead. Sure enough, a sedan was just coming to a stop on the curb outside, taillights glowing crimson in the deepening evening shadows. 

Sam’s car.

Marcy hopped the rest of the way into his shoes, yanked the buckles tight and closed them, and then rushed back to his room to snatch his empty backpack and water bottle. And finally, he was ready.

He tromped his way to the front door a final time, slipped by Sibyl who hadn’t moved from her spot, and gave her a quick ‘bye’ as he reached for the knob.

“BYE DAD!” he yelled further into the house as he swung the portal open. “Be back at ten!”

He didn’t even wait for a response, and didn’t feel the need to. Dad wasn’t like Mom; he wouldn’t feel morally obligated to say ‘good bye’ back before Marcy left, so he wouldn’t feel bad about it. Marcy was free to just leave, at long last. 

He swept into the crisp spring evening and shuffled down the steps to the walk, at the same time the passenger door of Sam’s sedan swung out and Hye poked his head up over it.

“HI!” the werewolf chirped, beaming grin showing off his incisors as usual. “I was gonna come get you!”

Marcy waved him off and found the grin to be infectious. His heart rate hadn’t quite slowed down after all the rushing yet, so he felt the pump of the blood through his veins and he was starting to feel excited now that he didn’t have being late to be worried about. “Nah, I’m ready to go.” He flung open the back door, tossed his backpack onto the opposite side of the bench and then swung into the car. With a light creak and a click, he shut the door behind him again and then fumbled with his seatbelt. 

As he had on Halloween, Sunny was driving. He glanced at Marcy through the rear view, smiled a little, and then off they were.

Marcy remembered the trip seeming to take forever the last time he went. But then, he was ten, and time never moved fast enough back then. An hour felt like an age. Surely, it couldn’t take _that_ long to get from home to the harbor.

“Have you ever been to Caucus Pier before?” Hye turned around almost entirely in his seat to look over the headrest at Marcy, his seatbelt straining. Sunny glanced over with slight disapproval, but merged onto the expressway without saying a word. 

Marcy blinked up at Hye and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Well, it’s been a while… we went once. My parents, uh… weren’t keen.”

With a flap of his hands, Hye made a noise that landed somewhere between a groan and a dismissal. “That’s no fun! It’s a great place! Sunny and I go every year.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that.”

“We started when we were fourteen and realized we could spend our money and our May Day however we like.” Hye tipped his head back with something like pride. “No more boring five-star restaurants or yacht clubs for us!”

Marcy’s eyebrows rose. Boring? Five-stars and yacht clubs? That wasn’t the word he’d use. Those sounded like choice digs; much better than a grody old pier carnival. But who was he to judge? He thought the definition of a good time was a night in playing video games and munching on cheesy popcorn. Plus, he didn’t spend a lot of time in fancy places; he wasn’t made of money and neither were his parents. Maybe Sunny and Hye had and it really was dull as all get out.

Did that mean… they were _rich_ rich?

_Considering how they dress, I wouldn’t be surprised._

“You guys have a yacht or something?” he blurted. A little voice somewhere deep in his head, which sounded suspiciously like his mother, told him that was a nosy question. He tried to pretend it didn’t exist, focusing on Hye instead. 

Hye shrugged. “My dad has one.” Then he jabbed a gloved thumb in Sunny’s direction. “His parents have two.”

 _Two!?_ Marcy’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “ _Two_ yachts??”

“One here, one at our winter home in Feiai,” Sunny said, like it was the simplest fact in the world.

“Feiai!?” Marcy’s jaw hung open and for three seconds, he didn’t even care to shut it. Feiai was like, one of the most famous Must-See locations in the world—a hot spot for the rich and famous, prime tourism opportunities, pinnacle paradise real estate. If there was a rich businessman in a movie or game, he had a home in Feiai. Same with mobsters trying to get rich quick and make a hasty getaway; how many of them set course for Feiai? Too many; it was a cliche at this point.

 _‘Winter home in Feiai’ he says._ Sunny almost made it sound normal. 

“Yeah.” Sunny glanced back through the mirror, and didn’t seem to notice Marcy’s internal crisis. “We used to go there every winter. It’s warmer, obviously, and that agrees with us better than snow. This winter was the first time I didn’t go, since we’ve been living at the shop.”

So much new information was buzzing through his brain, he wasn’t sure which rabbit to follow first. A brand new one hopped to the forefront, and Marcy latched onto it. He had to say _something_. “Wait, you guys don’t like snow?”

“I love snow!” Hye explained, splaying a hand over his chest and then placing it on Sunny’s shoulder. “Sunny’s okay with it, but winter tends to have elves feeling low on the best of days.”

That would explain Marcy’s confusion. He really didn’t know much at all about elves. “…Why?”

“I mean…” Sunny fidgeted a little, glancing awkwardly back again. “Obvious reasons.”

“S-Sorry… I don’t know a lot about elves.” Marcy swallowed the thread of shame that threatened to weave itself into his words. It wasn’t his fault. “They don’t exactly teach us this stuff in school.”

Hye’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? I learned it!”

“Ah,” Sunny nudged Hye’s arm gently, “that doesn’t count.”

“Well, my mom taught me. I was homeschooled.”

Wow, what was that even like… Marcy was starting to lose track of all the new concepts filling his head at this point. Until five minutes ago, he’d known Sunny and Hye had lived different lives than he had—one was an elf and a model and the other was a werewolf, for goodness sake. All the way down to their genetic make-up, they were so different. But he never would have thought they were _this_ different! It was like they came from a separate world entirely. Winter homes and yachts, homeschool… what next? Had they been to space too?

“Basically,” Sunny said, his ‘instruction voice’ creeping up, the same voice he used to explain things about the shop and how it worked, “we—elves, I mean—are really closely tied to the earth. We’re… kinda as much plant as we are person. So things like keeping hydrated and getting plenty of sunlight are really important for us. During the winter, all the plants go to sleep and the sun is further away from the planet, you know? So… we tend to feel really tired and sluggish all winter. Some elves even get sick.”

Hye flashed a Cheshire smirk. “Sunny gets crabby.”

That earned him a swat in the arm again.

“Wow…” Marcy sunk into contemplative silence for a little while, staring out the window at the city lights as they passed by and the sun sunk lower behind the skyline. He needed a minute to wrap his head around all this.

They sorta were from a whole other world, weren’t they? Marcy had only ever known, for the most part, the peaceful streets of Bushfort, the life of a latchkey kid, the regular old stuff: go to school, try out for sports, do your homework, get good grades, go to church on Sundays, be a good brother and a better son. He’d never really bothered to think about how different things could be… But now he was wondering. What was it like to be rich enough to take regular trips to Feiai? What was it like to have your energy levels tied to the seasons? Was it fun to be taught by your parents at home every day (Marcy couldn’t imagine that)?

It sounded so… interesting. Not a snooze, like his life. Or just… him, in general. He was pretty boring, by comparison. His sister thought so, Zazzy certainly thought so. He’d never understood why Zazzy and Rush wanted him around—much less people like Sunny and Hye, what with their yachts and all their uniqueness… He was just a little human from a little town. They had more interesting people to choose from under their own roof at Hambleton’s. 

Maybe that was just it. Maybe Zazzy and Rush didn’t want him around… maybe they were just being nice. Or… “nice;” Marcy didn’t think Zazzy really knew how. In any case, maybe Marcy was just dumb and subconsciously kept following people more interesting than him because he didn’t want to seem as boring as he was.

‘Cause being boring was… kinda lonely.

His throat tightened a little. With a grit of his teeth and raw determination, he swallowed it down. He was _not_ about to get emotional and ruin everything. He was here to have fun. Not mope. 

“Hey,” came Hye’s soft voice, much softer than he’d ever heard it. It surprised him enough to jerk his attention away from the window and to the back of Hye’s seat, where the werewolf was peering between the seat back and the headrest, just a pair of big brown eyes through the gap between upholstery. For the first time to Marcy’s knowledge, both of the werewolf’s ears stood straight up and keened on him. “Something the matter?”

Instinctively, Marcy sat up straight, his gaze darting toward the mirror—was Sunny watching too? Oh no, he was. Or, watching as much as he could while keeping most of his attention on the road. Marcy coughed to clear his throat, trying his best to shake away the sudden gloom that threatened his evening. 

“N-No, it’s just…” Where had that come from? He had no explanation, didn’t plan on giving one. So he just shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine. Just… lots to think about.”

“I mean,” Hye said carefully, “I didn’t think it was the elf stuff… If it’s something else and you wanna talk about it, I’ll listen.”

He didn’t really want to talk about it. It was his problem, not Hye’s, no matter how nicely Hye asked. Nobody needed to hear about Marcy’s juvenile woes. They weren’t important; heck, they probably weren’t even right. What did Marcy know? He was probably just being melodramatic. 

He waved Hye away. “It’s just school friend s**t. Don’t worry about it.”

Hye perked up a little, straightening to rest his chin on the headrest. “I’m good with friend s**t. I have experience.”

That made Marcy smile, just barely, the tiniest raise of one corner of his mouth. Meanwhile, silently, Sunny reached over and tugged on a wrinkle in Hye’s oversized long white sleeve, getting his attention. When Hye looked, the elf met his eyes, minutely shook his head. Then, like nothing had happened, Hye came right back.

“Only if you want,” he blurted. “But you shouldn’t have to hold it all by yourself.”

In that moment, all he could think about for some reason were the things Zazzy had said yesterday. Why, he hadn’t the slightest idea. It wasn’t relevant. 

Before he could stop them, the words jumped from behind his teeth. “Are we…” 

_Friends?_

What was he thinking? No, he _wasn’t_ thinking. He couldn’t just say that. That would be ruder than telling Zazzy to F-off. They would think he didn’t want to be friends, or worse—that he didn’t care enough. Didn’t put enough stock in the fact that they’d invited Marcy out with them out of the goodness of their hearts. They’d gone to the trouble of including him and yet here he was, questioning their friendship! They weren’t the bad friends; Marcy was.

“Yeah?” Hye prompted. “Are we…?”

This was so stupid. 

It was such a stupid question.

He didn’t need to ask, he should just _know_ by now.

“Are we… friends?” His throat constricted on the last syllable for some reason, making his voice crack and his frustration mount as he gulped down hard again. _Stop being such a baby!_

Up Hye’s eyebrows went once more. For a fleeting moment, Marcy dreaded that it was out of offense. This would be the part where they asked how that was even a question and list all the things they’d done for him—of which there were many, after nearly a full school term of getting to know them. Really, he was a fool if he couldn’t tell the answer to his own dumb question at this point. 

“I think we are,” said Hye, slowly, as if he were thinking out loud. He glanced aside at Sunny who, aside from a fleeting wounded expression, didn’t seem to have a reaction.

He looked away so he could switch lanes, but spoke earnestly anyway. “If we’re not already, we totally should be.”

Hye gasped dramatically. “ _Riiiight_ , we never made it official or anything, did we?”

Sensing a looming tangent, Marcy lunged to interject before Hye could go off. “But… why?”

The werewolf’s left ear finally flopped over into its usual droop, his head tilting toward the same side. “I dunno, we just didn’t think about—”

“No, I mean—” Marcy snapped his mouth shut. He really was intent on making a fool of himself, wasn’t he? Asking dumb questions, interrupting them before they could answer, thinking all these dumb things in the first place… What a mess. “I just… I’m kinda lame, you know? I don’t really… How do you _know_ whether we’re friends, anyway? Or, anyone? What does that even mean?”

More dumb questions. 

Except with this one, Marcy found he actually couldn’t think of a simple answer. His brain stalled. Nothing came to mind. _Uh oh… now I’ve gone and broken my brain. Nice going, clunker._

“That’s easy!” Hye wrapped his arms around the back of his seat, hugging himself close to it. “You know because you do stuff together. You go places and do things and eat food and buy stuff for each other and you know each others’ favorite colors and the name of their pet and what movies they like to watch when they’re sick. You make them happy and they make you happy.”

Well then, the three people in this car only counted for half of that. Marcy had no idea what their favorite colors were. He didn’t know what movies they liked and he’d never bought them anything because he had no idea what sorts of things they wanted. They met primarily at work or the gym, and only on occasion otherwise. And he certainly didn’t know how to make them happy… no more than he knew how to make Zazzy and Rush happy. 

Did they make him happy?

The answer was a definite no on the Zazzy-Rush front. But then, they could probably say the same thing… which meant Marcy was just as guilty of being a bad friend as they were. So what did that mean? Did he need to be a better friend and then things would get better?

He’d been happy earlier today. The idea of going out and doing random crap with Sunny and Hye had been—still was—exciting. Did that count? Or was he disqualifying himself with all of the dumb questions he was asking now?

He didn’t even know. He wasn’t making sense anymore. 

“Marcy.” Sunny’s voice broke through the haze of his angsting and snapped him back to the present, where he instinctively raised his eyes to meet Sunny’s in the mirror. The elf couldn’t hold his gaze steadily, due to driving, but he offered him quiet sympathy with his glances nonetheless. “Firstly—we don’t think you’re lame, so don’t worry about that with us.”

Hye nodded his head in emphatic agreement.

“Secondly—all the things Hye said are important. But I think the most important thing is that with friends, it _matters_ to them that you’re happy.”

It… matters?

What… that was it? That simple?

“So, for example…” Sunny glanced back again. “If you’d rather not go tonight, we want to do whatever you want to do. That’s the more important thing here.”

“No!” Marcy blurted thoughtlessly. He really did want to go. The fact that he didn’t have to think about that at all proved that well enough. He wanted to go to Caucus, he wanted to have fun there despite what his parents said, and he wanted to ride rides with people whose company he enjoyed. Those people, right now, were Sunny and Hye. As much as he felt inadequate in their presence, he liked hanging out with them. Maybe it was for dumb reasons. Maybe it was _because_ he felt inadequate and wanted to impress them or some stupid s**t like that. And maybe it was also because he thought they were cool people. Just like he thought Giuseppe was a cool person, to H**l with whatever crap Mom conjured up in her mind about him. 

Hye was cool because he carried enough energy to power a two-story building for three weeks straight, and it seemed like nothing could make him stop smiling. He was funny, in a stupid, silly kind of way and Marcy meant that as the highest praise. He had a weird sense of style, but it made him stand out. He presented himself just as he was, flaws and all, fearlessly and unapologetically. G**, Marcy wished he could do that.

He may not feel as close to Sunny as he did to Hye, but he still admired the guy. Sunny was cool because despite his consistent exasperation, his patience levels were actually pretty amazing. Marcy had never seen him legitimately upset about anything, even very frustrating things, since he met him. He wasn’t on Dori levels of zen, but he was more longsuffering than anyone Marcy knew from school or church. And for how often Hye seemed to agitate him—sometimes intentionally—that was an impressive feat. In addition, he too seemed to stand resolute in himself, as himself, in _heels_. And pink hair. Marcy could never pull that off!

He _wanted_ to be their friend. Their actual friend, not the kind of friend where you used the word just to be polite and seem like a nice person. He wanted to hang out with them and go places and do things and all the dumb stuff friends do. 

But maybe they didn’t want that too, maybe it wasn’t mutual. Like Sunny said, it mattered that they were happy too and if they weren’t—

No, wait. Sunny was asking what _Marcy_ wanted to do, what would make _him_ happiest. And by Sunny logic, that meant they cared. It _mattered_. 

So…

They were friends, now.

Just like that?

“I…” Marcy struggled to pick up his previous train of thought, but he’d rather left them hanging after that abrupt objection. “No, I wanna go, I wanna… do friend s**t. All that stuff.” His voice grew stronger in his throat, gaining momentum as it slowly dawned on him: he genuinely _hated_ how unsure he was about all this. Hated it _so much_. Had he ever really known what it was like to have friends? Real friends? “I wanna go on the scariest ride and see who yells loudest. Yeah! And I’m gonna buy a bunch of deep-fried crap that’s horrible for me and I’m gonna enjoy it and share it if you want some.”

Boy, that sounded really stupid. But it also felt really good to say.

Hye fed into the energy, bouncing in his seat and grinning over the headrest with a long hiss of a “yesssss!”

Through the rear view mirror, Sunny smiled wide enough to show his teeth.

Screw Zazzy and his idea of what being “friends” meant. Marcy didn’t want to think about him for the rest of the night. He’d deal with that later.

For now, it was time to stop over-complicating things. Time to relearn what it meant to be real friends. He, Sunny and Hye were gonna have a blast.

“By the way,” he added, “what are your favorite colors?”

Hye’s was navy blue—the shade of the sky when the stars start to really shine, he said. Sunny’s was the pale vibrant blue of the sky at noon. When Sunny asked about Marcy’s, he answered, “Hot rod red. Like a nice sports car.”

There. Marcy would get this friend thing down.

Ten minutes later, Sunny was pulling into a packed parking lot on the banks of the harbor. The sun was almost completely gone, the last of its rays dying the sky in its ombre of purples and pinks, of which only sparse glitters reflected on the surface of the water. At this point, the city lights from the north end of the city reflected more, like a galaxy dancing over the deep. And, of course, there was the carnival—a glowing cluster of lights dozens of yards off, stretched out on the pier like an arm wrapped in Christmas lights thrust out into the bay. The most obvious features were the towering ferris wheel and the largest rollercoaster, a twisting heap of yellow rails smack dab in the middle of the pier. It was the only part of the park that they could see from this distance that wasn’t glowing with neon.

That one, he remembered. The _Dragon Racer_. If only because he hadn’t been tall enough to ride it last time he was here. 

There didn’t seem to be any obvious parking places open. Marcy guessed he should have expected that. If all the kids at his school in little old Bushfort were talking about it, chances were people in other places were just as much.

Sunny brought the car to an easy pause in the middle of the lot. “You guys go ahead. I’ll find a spot and then catch up.”

Marcy opened his mouth to ask ‘are you sure’, but before he could get the first breath out, Hye practically threw his door open.

“Okay!” He bounced out like a renegade rubber ball, lunging into the night air and slinging what looked like a messenger bag across his body. In the glow of the nearby streetlamps, Marcy could finally see he sported that oversized white long sleeve and blue and white striped boardshorts. So a little color _was_ allowed. “Come on, Marcy!”

Seemed like it was okay. So he cast Sunny a quick grin and bumped his own door open to climb out. He almost forgot his backpack and ducked in to snag it before they left.

As Sunny pulled the car away, Hye started off in the pier’s general direction at a brisk pace that Marcy easily fell in step with. He didn’t know where he was going; he didn’t remember the area very well, and he’d only been there during the day. The nighttime changed the landscape. The sea air was still the same though and swept over them, bearing the familiar smell of salt and algae. 

“So, why do your parents not like the carnival?” Hye asked as they strode along.

Marcy shrugged a little. “I dunno. Mom thinks it’s a bad place for kids. Dad thinks carnival people are shady.”

The werewolf laughed a little. “That’s not very fair!”

The thought occurred to Marcy and was then leaving his lips before he could stop it. “Ha—not very _fair_. As in carnival.”

The expression of pure joy that Hye shot him more than made up for the shame that struck him in his very soul. What a lame joke. But judging by the rippling guffaws that made Hye double over, he must’ve thought it was funny.

Once Hye got a grip, he straightened and him-hawed a bit. “I mean, I guess some of them are—shady, I mean. But like, they can’t _all_ be shady, that just doesn’t make sense. Plus, Caucus got new management last year! They’ve changed a lot from before.”

That was news to him, but just as well. Marcy couldn’t recall much of the park from before anyways. It’d be like a whole new experience. 

Maybe the animals were even treated better now. That would make Rush happy.

The evening air grew cooler around them by the minute, as the sun hid itself just on the edge of the horizon and Hye, chattering on about his and Sunny’s previous visits, led the way through the condominium buildings hedging the waterfront, where vessels of every which kind sat buoying in the waves that lapped against the docks and boardwalk supports. Big canoes and small motor boats, paddlers and pontoons, in vast arrays of color, moored at individual posts, and of course, further down the front, the shipyards filled to the brim with imposing sloops and yachts in various states of wear from well-kept to rust-ridden. Marcy wondered if Sunny’s parents’ yacht was among them somewhere. 

“Giuseppe put it this way: Caucus _before_ was commercialized magic. But these new managers seem more interested in actual magical history.”

“Ah…” Marcy knew squat about magic, so that didn’t give him much to go on. “…By the way, why didn’t Giuseppe come?” It seemed like something the ginger would enjoy participating in.

“Oh, he’ll be here.” Hye grinned slyly. “Just not with us. He’s got a date!”

Marcy’s eyebrows shot up. “A date?”

“Yeah. Her name’s Talia. She’s super cute.”

 _Talia._ The name rang familiar. “Ohh, I remember her, from Valentine’s Day!”

“Yeah, that’s right! She was there. They’ve been talking since. So we might see them around.”

And then they were passing under the first archway, which loosened a distant memory in the back of Marcy’s head. He vaguely recalled the vibrant yellow and blue stripes on the signposts, the elegant serif caps of the name ‘Caucus Pier’ in big pale silver letters. Little hanging plaques beneath the arch advertised sport fishing, boating, cafes, and their final destination—the carnival. They left the archway behind and ventured out onto the water, their way lit by what looked like old gaslamps with blue-tinted glass. A sound started to carry over on the breeze—a steady rhythm, like drums. Marcy thought maybe he could make out other instruments too, like a violin. That was new. He remembered old classic rock playing over the PA system last time. Mom hadn’t liked it.

The pier itself was a sprawling structure, vast in its own right, and it took several good, long minutes just to walk the first stretch of it, past little kiosks and shops, some open for business despite the late hour and some already dark and waiting until the night was done. Hye stopped at one and ordered some sticky dumplings, two iced teas, and a cola for Marcy. Once they had their food, they continued on their way, passing benches, flowering shrubs in concrete platforms, and countless more gaslamps, the blue ones remaining on the fringe of activity and the center of it all well-lit in gold instead. 

After the shops came a stretch of open pier where the music was louder, reverberating from speakers raised high on metal poles and, at the center, piled high and blazed a bonfire of epic proportions. The flames, roaring toward the darkened sky, flickered from red to yellow, to green, blue, purple and back again. People clustered all around—humans, hares, foxes, elves—half in old-fashioned getup, furs and foliage and tattered clothes in natural shades, some with branches or horns strapped to their heads or tangled in their hair. Among them, still others appeared to be dressed in the same way Sunny had been for Halloween last year—dark, bark-skinned creatures with glowing eyes and smoking antlers. Nightmares.

Some of them danced, spinning circles around the fire, while others—mostly those dressed in casual, modern wear—watched or munched on concessions, sipped on drinks; one man, in the guise of a Nightmare but in shades of grey and white rather than black and brown, seemed to have brought a large drum and matched the beat from the speakers with the flats of his hands, or his fingers on the rim.

The sight had stopped Marcy in his tracks and now all he could do was stare. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at.

“Ah,” said Hye, smiling and flapping a hand at the commotion in general. “I think they had a may pole here earlier in the day. Too dark now, so it’s fire time.”

From behind the fire, as the ring of dancers continued its spin, a barrel-chested man painted green from head to toe, with a beastly mask hiding his face and a wild mane of foresty hair tangled with twigs, leaves, moss, and a pair of goat-like horns, came frolicking into sight. He wore boots fashioned to look like cloven hooves. Unlike the others, he carried a bow and had an arrow nocked but not drawn, the end of which showered green sparks like the Emerald Day sparklers that kids ran around with. As he twirled to the music, he raised the bow to the sky, drew back the string and let it fly. The flaming arrow shot straight up several meters and then erupted into a rain of fire flecks that glittered from green to gold and spun in delicate spirals before going out. A firework without an explosion, only the satisfying crackle of sparks. 

That had to be magic.

“That guy’s dressed as one of the Founders,” Hye explained, gesturing to the green man.

Since Marcy had absolutely no idea what that was supposed to mean, it didn’t really work as an explanation. Maybe it was just more of the otherworldly, magical stuff. After all, Sunny was an elf, he knew all that stuff in the car and was the one who said to wear white for this. And Hye was his best friend so… well, Hye probably knew a lot about it too.

Which left Marcy as the odd, ignorant man out. “The what now?” 

“The Founding Spirits. Or at least… I think so. I’ve been reading more about them recently.”

“…I don’t get it…” The only time he heard the word ‘spirit’ was at mass and whenever Rush got to talking about ghosts. Oh, and that one time they all had to explain to Marcy that Nightmares were just tree spirits, no matter how spooky they looked.

Someone put a hand on Marcy’s shoulder and nearly made him jump straight out of his shoes. 

“Sorry!” Sunny blurted, suddenly beside them and waving his hands in a frantic attempt to placate him. “Should’ve said something first, sorry, sorry…”

“Sunny!” Hye snagged him by the elbow, linking their arms with enthusiasm. “You know about the Founding Spirits, right?”

The elf—dressed in a pure white v-neck and capris, golden heeled sandals, and a long, sheer, fluttery sort of jacket thing, ivory with elegant green vines along the hems—paused to take in the bonfire, and the green man as he danced, and then shrugged one shoulder. “Uhh… some. My dad’s taught me a little, but I’m not necessarily an expert.”

The hesitation was surprising. Marcy had already thought elves were supposed to be all magical and wise and, after what Sunny explained in the car, doubly so. This seemed like the kind of thing he’d know all about. If anyone was going to know about magical spirits and mythology, wouldn’t it be the elf?

Hye wiggled enough to sway both of them back and forth. “Tell us some stuff.”

“Well…” Raising a manicured hand, Sunny pointed toward the green man. “That would be Rex. He’s like… the spirit of nature and kinda the chief of the four Founders. Some people believe he made the elves at the beginning of time, and he’s in charge of things like… transition and travel and borders… Supposedly, if you want your borders safe, or you’re traveling somewhere, or… I don’t know, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any day dedicated to the idea of transitioning from one thing to another, you… pay tribute. Like this.”

‘Pay tribute’ conjured to mind all sorts of less-than-savory things that Marcy had seen in movies and video games. Things like blood rites and sacrifices. It creeped him out just thinking about it. Especially with all the Nightmares prancing around, looking better suited for a dark October night than a festive spring celebration. But Sunny couldn’t possibly mean anything like _that_. “But what _is_ this?”

“Rex likes parties,” Hye said. “I remember that.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say. Parties, good food, good drinks, loud music. General revelry. And if you throw a really good, lively party, supposedly he’ll come visit himself to join in on the fun.”

Sunny shrugged again. “He likes to claim festive, active spaces as his own. Or something like that.”

Marcy frowned. ‘Not exactly an expert,’ he said, and yet Sunny spoke like he knew what he was talking about. But he kept discounting himself for some reason. Like he didn’t buy what he, himself, was saying. “Do you… think it’s true?”

Once more, Sunny took a moment to watch the fire dance, the Nightmares, the drummer. “Not really. I always saw it as just… fairy tales, you know?”

“Why?” It wasn’t that Marcy didn’t understand that part. He had his own beliefs and he knew a lot of people thought they were fairy tales too. He was simply curious as to why. 

“I guess I just… don’t like who the spirits are said to be. And I wouldn’t trust them to keep me safe or look out for me.”

That… was fair enough. For some reason, Marcy thought of his mother. And Zazzy. And he couldn’t argue.

Honestly, maybe Marcy shouldn’t have assumed anything about Sunny in the first place. If today had proven anything, it was just how much he didn’t know about things outside his day-to-day. But when he thought about it, if humans could develop hundreds of thousands of different ways of seeing the world over the course of history, it was actually rather dumb to expect elves to do otherwise just for being elves. 

Wow, that was a big thought. Marcy struggled to gulp it down, and then locked it away in some mental closet somewhere. He’d have to think more about that later.

The Rex cosplayer shot another arrow into the air, dazzling the crowd with more showers of gold. Snapped back to the present, Marcy looked up, watched the glitter drift, listened to it crackle. The people clapped, the drums continued to beat, the dancers had their fun. Others passed by on the fringes of the firelight, passively gazing over as they went on their way to or from the carnival beyond. 

He had a lot to think about some other time, it seemed. But tonight was not for thinking. It was fun time. 

As if in tune with his thoughts, Hye skipped around to Marcy’s left to the beat of the drum (dragging Sunny along with him) and linked his other arm through Marcy’s, his hand grasping the styrofoam tray of dumplings carefully between them. He glanced from him to Sunny and then back again, flashing his teeth. “You ready to head into the carnival?” 

Slowly, Marcy grinned back. He snatched up one of the kebobs, twisting so it wouldn’t drip. He bit off one of the dumplings, felt it dissolve on his tongue. It tasted so sweet. He savored it carefully, and didn’t bother to swallow before he answered.

“H**l yeah. Let’s go on some rides.” 


	6. the reason i run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcy has a lot to think about. Too bad he doesn't have much time for that. Or experience...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter in this arc! :V Boy, are we here already... Marcy's freshman year is over. The next chapter of his journey is poised to begin.

“Marcy,” Mom breathed a slow, trepidations sigh, “we’ve just been so concerned about you. You’ve been so… moody a-and irresponsible lately. It’s so unlike you!”

It took everything Marcy had in him not to roll his eyes.

Over the last two weeks, Marcy had grown used to the simmering heat of frustration tingling deep under his skin. He’d managed to pack it up in a mental box and shove it aside for the most part, throwing himself into his work, end-of-year assignments, and last-minute training for the last big meet to help distract him. For the most part, he’d thought he’d managed to tame himself, to put the whole Unbirthday mess, and everything that came after, fully behind him. But the last ten minutes? It was like his parents had collectively taken a poker to the flame and stoked it right back up and now… now he could feel it, heating his face, drawing sweat to his neck, turning the simmer to a full-fledged oven that was outright baking him alive. He had indents in his palms from where he’d clenched his fingers too tightly, his nails digging into his skin. 

It had been three months—three months of trying to make up for that mistake. When would she be satisfied?

“So you’re sending me to boot camp for being moody?” he summarized in the most controlled voice he could manage, slouched in the living room recliner, staring unblinkingly between the two of them where they sat side by side on the couch. Dad looked somewhat suspended, torn somewhere between silent support for his wife and the occasional pitiful glance in Marcy’s direction the longer Mom talked. 

Mom herself indulged in a not-so-patient eyeroll toward the ceiling before folding her hands and using them to reemphasize her point. “It’s not ‘boot camp’. We just explained. It’s a _summer camp_.”

“A military summer camp.”

“Yes!” she said with forced enthusiasm. “They teach things like structure and teamwork and dedication; we think it could be really good for you.”

He did his very best to swallow down any and all reaction, but a scoff still managed to slip past his throat, his head shaking as he tore his gaze away from them, from her, and settled it on the dark, empty fireplace. He sank further into the recliner—practically felt the world closing in around him. The room was suddenly much too small.

Why would they do this to him? Hadn’t he been good enough?

“It’ll be fun for you! You can go, have fun, _learn_ , and…” He heard the ‘Mom sad’ slipping into her voice and his pulse quickened, his teeth grinding. “Marcy, I just want my good boy back. That’s all.”

Apparently not. 

He didn’t want to deal with this anymore; he just wanted it to be over. So he sighed, and climbed his way out of the chair. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.”

She’d already bought his slot anyways. There was nothing he could do about it now. 

“Marcy—” she started to object. He ignored her, swung around behind the recliner and set course straight for his room.

He needed to hunt something. 

She didn’t follow him, thank God. They let him go, let him slam his door, and left him to dive headfirst into Outlaw’s Honor uninhibited for the next two hours. It was how he would have spent the Sunday evening anyways, but it felt necessary now. He had homework to finish, but his head was a sinkhole, threatening to swallow him, and he was too sick of thinking so hard about his mother’s opinions to indulge in it now. A hunting mini-quest for a legendary animal pelt was the best distraction. All he had to do was follow the game prompts and solve the puzzles—it was something he was actually _good_ at. His scores spoke for themselves.

 _‘I just want my good boy back.’_ Why would she say it like that? It was Mother’s Day today, he’d helped Dad cook lunch after mass, helped make sure she had the whole afternoon off, gave her her flowers, even kissed her cheek when she asked. And here she was, talking like she’d been abandoned. But he hadn’t gone anywhere… had he?

_Nope. Not thinking about it._

By the time a gentle knock resounded from the door, he’d successfully taken down the legendary bear and was in the process of hauling its massive fur to the nearest trading post. He didn’t even spare the door a glance, keeping himself firmly focused on guiding his horse.

“I’m busy,” he said, just loud enough for whoever was at the door to hear. If it was Mom, he didn’t think he’d be able to talk to her again at least for the rest of the day. 

“Son…” Dad’s voice. Soft, a question. “…Can I come in?”

He actually bothered to ask. That was nice at least. 

Despite the refreshing request, Marcy still wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to talk anything out at this point. What was there to talk about? The decision had been made for him, and for no reason it seemed like. It wasn’t worth it to argue. As much as he wanted to.

“Marcy?” Dad reminded him that he was still waiting for an answer.

With a heavy sigh, Marcy hit the pause button and leaned forward to set the controller atop the console. He kept his back to the door. “I guess.”

Quietly, he heard the door open and then close again, light footsteps approaching until the tall figure of Richard Ross stepped into Marcy’s peripheral view around the foot of his bed, where he sat himself down on the corner. His dark eyes were warm in the dim lamp light, that same look of pity curving his mouth into a sad attempt at a smile. That was his ‘tough break, kid’ face.

“Can we talk about all that?” he started.

Marcy stared at the frozen screen, his character seated atop his horse, waiting in the middle of an empty road over an open field. He jerked one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. His insides were squirming, clenching; he didn’t like it. The little voices inside wailed, _look him in the eye, you rude child!_ and _you’re just throwing a temper tantrum, grow up_. He gulped them down.

Dad sighed a little. “Look, kiddo. Your mom is just… worried—”

“Yeah, I got that,” Marcy blurted before he could stop himself. He flushed in the shadow of his own words, but couldn’t take them back. 

“I hadn’t… I didn’t realize all of her reasons until this evening and I _do_ wish we’d had the chance to talk it over more before we came to you, but. She’d already bought your slot.” Dad let that sink in for a couple seconds before continuing. There was a small bit of reassurance in the knowledge that she’d blindsided him as much as she had Marcy. “That said, I didn’t come to talk about her. I want to know what you think.”

Against his will, Marcy found his eyes darting in his father’s direction. “About what?”

Dad shrugged, the same one-armed, clumsy motion as Marcy. “Any of it.”

“Ah… yeah. I’m-I’m thrilled. To be sent off to some military camp for the entire summer, because I’m ‘moody’ apparently.” As the words dripped sardonically off his tongue, they felt somewhat uncomfortable. He’d never been so sarcastic with his father before; he didn’t actually know how it would be taken. Maybe he’d just managed to convince Dad that Mom was right…

‘Seven weeks’ Mom had said; that’s how long the course was. Two whole months. That was his entire summer. An entire summer that he’d actually started looking forward to until today; no more homework, no more track or awkward talks with Sterling or dealing with Zazzy or worrying about why he’d been more antagonistic than usual lately… It was going to be just him, home, his games, and Hambleton’s. 

Now, he wouldn’t have any of that. _All because of that one stupid mistake months ago…_

Slowly, Dad nodded, his hand resting on his knee rippling his fingers a bit. “I see…”

Yeah, Marcy had probably just stepped into his own grave. All this overreacting… he was just being a brat. 

“Well.” Dad’s fingers rippled some more. “Aside from your mother’s reasons… what do you think of it?”

Marcy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Forget about why she wants you to go, for a second. I’d actually been planning on asking you about it beforehand, now that you’re old enough to go. If it was just some camp I went to as a kid—where I learned how to work with a unit, learned basic survival skills, got in a lot of physical training—what would you think about going? I thought it’d be something you might enjoy.”

Enjoy? Why would Marcy enjoy it?

But, that was his impulse answer. The impulse still stewing over his mother’s assumptions, the one Dad was trying to talk past right now. So Marcy needed to try and extract himself from that if he wanted to answer honestly.

He pushed thoughts of his mother aside—it was startlingly easy to dismiss them, for the moment—and thought about what they’d told him about the camp itself. 

It was about an hour and a half outside of Lore, back in the Winky Peaks. He hadn’t looked at the brochure his mom had all but shoved in his face, but she’d mentioned schedules, ‘discipline’, and drill training. All the things she thought he needed for some reason. But then… she’d also mentioned camping. Fishing. Group exercises. Surviving in the wild, sleeping under the stars like real-life Outlaw’s Honor; playing war games just like Rogue Sentinel. 

That stuff… didn’t sound so bad.

In fact, it kinda sounded fun. But… then he thought of the other stuff, and Mom’s reasons and her pity-filled face and his heart sunk to his stomach again.

“I… it did sound fun. By itself.” He leaned his palms back onto his bed and hunched his shoulders, staring at the little blinking lights on his gaming console. “But… Mom kinda ruined it. If I go… it’ll be because of _her_ reasons. Not mine.”

Dad hummed and resigned into silence that stretched between them, long enough to feel awkward rather quickly. In the midst of the pause, Marcy chanced a glance in his father’s direction. He caught the contemplative look on his stern face. And despite a brief attempt, he couldn’t even begin to decipher what might be going on in his head. His parents were always such conundrums… It left him feeling like he was stuck outside some sort of invisible wall that hid them from him, but not the other way around. Like a one-way mirror in an interrogation room.

“Well… I can talk to her,” Dad said at length, fidgeting with his fingers some more. “And maybe look into getting a refund… if it’s not too late, we’ll see. I just wanted to say, if you do go… you might have fun. Despite Mom’s reasons. Just… something to think about.”

And that was, apparently, all Dad had to say. He stood, clapped Marcy on the shoulder, and then sauntered back out, opening and closing the door as quietly as he had the first time and leaving Marcy alone with his thoughts. 

Except… there weren’t many thoughts. For the first time in a long time, Marcy’s head was stunningly quiet, synchronizing with the sudden silence of the room and providing nothing to grab onto. 

What was he supposed to think? Except what he’d already been thinking. That this summer was going to _suck_. 

Though, there was some comfort in the thought that maybe, just maybe, Dad thought Mom was being just as unreasonable as Marcy did. He just wasn’t going to say it.

And maybe that was because nobody contested Mom in this house. Not without risking their necks and their good-standing with her. That was the most frustrating thing of all. 

Why did Mom get to decide who was a good person and who wasn’t?

_Because she’s Mom._

He huffed. That answer wasn’t good enough anymore.

Once more, he did little more than stare at his console for several more minutes, trying to think. Failing to think. How could someone fail to think? Didn’t it come naturally? As long as he’d known himself, he’d struggled with thinking _too much_ ; it was such a battle just to get his critical thoughts to shut the h**l up and leave him alone. Yet now that he finally had silence, by no action on his part, he didn’t know whether he was supposed to miss it or be grateful. It felt… alien. 

He couldn’t just keep sitting here, though. He had to make a decision.

What decision? He wasn’t sure yet. But staring at his console wasn’t making it. He needed to do… something. Anything. 

He could scoop up his controller again, keep playing. Get the pelt to the trading post and then… do something with it. Maybe buy himself that ridiculous fur overcoat that the pelt unlocked. After that? He hadn’t the slightest. That completed his mini-quest; completed his distraction. He hadn’t planned anything after that.

He wasn’t good at ideas. He knew this all too well.

But… he did know someone who was good at ideas.

After dragging himself off his bed, he shuffled his way quietly toward the kitchen, listening for any movement or sign that his parents were still in the main space of the house. He didn’t hear any voices or footsteps, and he couldn’t hear the TV, so he proceeded carefully but steadily. Not a soul occupied the living room, yet he darted past it as if someone was. Just in case. He didn’t want to be blindsided by someone he couldn’t see. 

The kitchen was equally, thankfully empty and he slipped in to the phone, glanced at the clock—7:21—and dialed a now-familiar number.

Only after three rings did it occur to him that it was still Mother’s Day. What if they were busy?

It was too late. With a click, someone picked up.

 _“Hi-hi!”_ came Hye’s voice. _“This is Hambleton’s.”_

“U-Uh… hi. Hye?” The words fumbled from his mouth, understandably so considering he hadn’t planned a greeting at all in the precious seconds the ringtone had provided him. He frowned at himself, shook his head in hopes to clear it. 

_“Marcy!”_ Hye erupted with glee. _“Heyyy, I’m starting to recognize your voice over the phone!”_

He said it with such enthusiasm that Marcy almost felt bad for realizing he’d been able to do that for months now. Recognize their voices. He hadn’t noticed when it started to happen, it just… had. So rather than respond to that, he decided to just go for his original purpose—slightly modified, obviously, because. He forgot about Mother’s Day.

“Yeah,” he began, “same. Uh… hey, I was just… wondering. Um. Are you… are you and Sunny… busy doing stuff for Mother’s Day, or…”

_Dummy, they probably are and you’re just bothering them. Why did you even call?_

_“Sunny is. I mean, was. They went out for a fancy lunch. I um… My present was a surprise.”_ An unfamiliar awkwardness crept into Hye’s tone, and he cleared his throat to brush it away. _“I just had it delivered to her.”_

Well, none of that implied evening plans… right? “So… you guys are home now.”

 _“Yeah, most of us are.”_ Hye’s voice grew somewhat distant, like he turned away from the receiver. _“Sam’s visiting Persephone with his brother, and Dori’s treating his mom to dinner, but other than that, the gang’s all here. Why?”_

The moment of truth. Marcy gulped. “U-Uh, I was just… wondering, uh, c-could I… maybe…”

What was he doing? He’d been told all his life how rude it was to invite himself over to places. Yet here he was, trying to weasel his way into doing just that. He really was a brat. He swallowed down whatever pitiful attempt at a request he was trying to formulate, a sigh replacing it. He was about to take it all back, when Hye spoke up first.

_“Hey… you okay?”_

For some unfathomable reason, the sheer amount of pure concern in those two words struck a burn behind Marcy’s eyes and he had to scramble to try and ward it off, blink it away, gulp down the sudden lump lodged in his throat. _Get a grip, get a grip!_

“Yeah, fine, I just… I was kinda bored, so I-I thought. Maybe. You’d want to do something, or… something.” He coughed into the phone, trying to bypass his own awkwardness with as much speed and finesse (or lack thereof) as humanly possible, and thought too late that it was probably very loud.

Without missing a beat, Hye responded, _“You wanna come over?”_

Marcy had never been more thankful for the werewolf than he was in that moment.

The call was blessedly brief after that, with a few more mindless pleasantries and ‘see you in five’s before Marcy hung up and rushed back to his room to get ready to go. All he really needed was a pair of socks; his jackets had been left lonely for the last week since the heat of May really set in. Then he finagled on his sneakers, a bit of inspiration striking him, before he ducked out of his room and toward the door to his sister’s. He rapped quietly on it, just under the little magnetic sign nailed to its face, reading her name in scrawling cursive.

After two seconds of silence, the door opened and Sibyl stared up at him. “What?”

“Tell Mom and Dad that I went to Hambleton’s,” he said mostly in monotone. “I’ll be back later.”

She frowned a little, and for a second he thought maybe she’d refuse. But after eyeing him narrowly, she arched a brow and seemed to resign herself to the request. “Okay…”

“Thanks.” A beat of awkwardness passed between them, where Marcy felt he should do something else to express proper gratitude, but. He couldn’t even bring himself to smile. So he just nodded curtly. “See ya.”

He turned away from her confused expression and headed straight for the door and out into the golden evening. The warm air embraced him, the light from the sinking sun casting long shadows through the sleepy Bushfort neighborhood. He didn’t look back as he left his yard.

Foregoing his bike, he’d decided to traverse on foot. And not just walking, either; he had a final meet to prepare for. So as soon as his soles hit the sidewalk, he sucked in a breath and took off at a jog. Adrenaline sounded good right now.

He maintained a steady pace the whole of the way through town, waved at the occasional fellow pedestrian that he encountered out for an evening stroll or leaving a shop as it closed. His heart throbbed in his chest, his breath puffing oxygen in and out in time with his steps. Sweat collected across his skin. It never felt fast enough, hot enough, so with each passing block, he gradually picked up the pace.

He wondered what kinds of exercise he’d get at the camp. With a particularly ragged huff, he willed the thought away.

Though not as efficient as his bike, he made it to the shop in decent time. He jogged past the strip mall, over the curb and city-managed embankment landscaping, and slowed only once he’d entered the official parking lot for Hambleton’s Ice Creamery. He approached the back door gasping for air, and he was somewhat disappointed when the metal knob wasn’t cool at the touch. Instead, it was almost hot against his skin, still retaining the warmth from the day’s sunlight. 

When he tugged, the door didn’t budge. Locked.

Of course it was locked. Not only was it Sunday, but it was Mother’s Day and the boss was out. The shop was closed.

_Stupid._

A sigh escaped him, dragging precious recovered oxygen out of him before he inhaled deeply. He needed to calm down, calm down. This was fine. Hye knew he was coming. He stepped back from the door and glanced around it; perhaps there was a security camera that he hadn’t noticed before? It wasn’t as if he’d ever taken a really good look at the empty wall on the boring side of the business. 

He couldn’t spot anything that might look like a camera, but he did notice something else. Just to the right of the door, a tiny white doorbell button nestled in a rusty metal plate, a dark spot amongst the worn tawny grey bricks. Never once had he spotted that before, yet obviously it had been there for a long time. 

_Even more evidence of your stupidity._

At this point, all he could really do was roll his eyes at his own melodrama and give the bell a tap.

A few minutes passed. He waited in more awkward silence, slowly catching his breath, staring at the blank face of the metal door, noticing dings and scrapes in the cadet grey surface that he’d never paid attention to before. It was strange how much he’d never seen, until he actually took the time to look.

Then the door swung inward and revealed a mouth split in a wide, toothy smile and a pair of wolfish eyes. Dressed in a navy v-neck and a pair of patterned shorts, Hye bounced beneath the doorframe, practically bursting with his excitement—as if Marcy had never come over before.

_Though… I’ve never been here just for fun. Maybe that’s it._

“Hi!” Hye greeted with gusto, only to immediately pause and cock his head to one side, confusion in the quirk of his brows. “Did you run?”

For a brief second, Marcy wondered how Hye could know that. He’d, for the most part, caught his breath and it wasn’t likely he was any more winded now than he ever was after biking the distance from home. But he glanced down at himself, took note of the sweat darkening his t-shirt, most likely a lot more than usual. 

“Uh… yeah.” He didn’t feel like offering an explanation.

Hye didn’t say anything for one long second, before he shook it off (literally) and stepped back, opening wide the door and splaying out a hand to invite Marcy in. “Well, come on!”

Once more grateful for the easy escape, Marcy helped himself inside into the dim kitchen. Not a single light was on, given the day and time. No one else greeted them; it was a strange, new feeling. Hye led the way through the dark, vacant space and swung through the kitchen doors like a desperado in a cowboy film, plunging them into warm, peach-hued light. The big diner windows more than made up for the lack thereof in the kitchen, letting in massive blocks of golden sun that lit up the diner almost as brightly as the overheads would have, streaming across the tile, inching toward the back walls, leaving long shadows and lazy bits of dust catching the light like glitters of magic. The moment his feet cross the threshold, Marcy paused and took in the cozy pastel space, glanced over the counter, the walls, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the quiet air—he could almost smell the peacefulness here. 

When a chair scraped against the floor, he opened them again and found Hye situating himself onto one of the barstools on the opposite side of the counter. Marcy frowned a little.

“Uh…” Carefully, he left the barista space and stepped onto the open floor between the office hall and the counter, glancing from the former, to Hye. He’d assumed they’d be going upstairs, but perhaps that was a mistake. Though, for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why… “Are we… just… hanging out here?”

With a little smile, warm under his dark eyes, Hye leaned to one side and patted a hand on the stool next to him—Marcy noticed now that, for the first time, Hye’s hands weren’t gloved; he could clearly make out the thick, dull werewolf nails. “Sit.”

Confusion started to crack, make way for something a little more like… concern. Suspicion? _Fear_. 

Hye wanted to talk.

 _“Marcy, we want to talk to you,”_ that was just how the conversation had started this afternoon. With pity on Mom’s face and Dad offering a single attempt at a reassuring smile. At least Hye could stick to his.

“Come on, man, I…” Marcy shied away. “I don’t… wanna talk about it.”

“So there _is_ something,” Hye emphasized the words with a point in Marcy’s direction. The smile never left his face.

“W-Well, kinda, but…”

The point turned into a dismissive wave. “We don’t hafta talk about it. I just wanna tell you something.”

 _Why can’t you do it on the way up?_ Marcy didn’t understand why everybody had to make such a big deal out of everything. It’d be so much easier if they just left it alone; left him alone. He was fine. He didn’t need to be taken care of. It was like they all _needed_ something to be wrong, just so they could “fix” it. 

Immediately, Marcy felt guilt twist in his gut, as he gazed upon Hye’s openly benevolent face, nearly silhouetted by the light behind him, a lining of gold on the edges of his shaggy hair and ears. No… that wasn’t fair. Hye hadn’t done anything wrong. _Yet._ He said that he just wanted to tell Marcy something, and as of right now, Marcy had no idea what that something would be. Hadn’t he determined that he wanted to be able to take peoples’ words for things without overthinking? He’d have to actually start at some point. The last thing he wanted to do was make the same mistake as his mother.

So, swallowing his nervousness and pride, he shuffled his way to the seat Hye had indicated and hopped up onto it, bracing his elbows immediately onto the countertop. His eyes glued themselves to the tile details, the swirl of the marble, rather than meet the gaze of his friend. 

For one long moment, he worried that Hye would pull a “look at me while I’m talking to you” like his parents always did. But instead, silence passed for three seconds before Hye slapped the countertop. It made Marcy jump a little.

“Okay,” the werewolf blurted. “So, I know you like to do things by yourself… and that’s okay! That’s totally okay and fine and whatever, but I just want you to know that like. If you don’t _want_ to, you don’t _have_ to.”

And the moment Marcy thought to ask ‘don’t have to what?’, Hye answered before he could even open his mouth.

“Bear it alone, I mean.”

Marcy clenched his teeth.

Unaware, Hye continued. “I don’t think people were meant to carry all their burdens by themselves. No matter what Ji says. He needs to talk things out as much as anyone else; he’s just stubborn and refuses. Which is definitely something you can do; I mean, everybody has their own life to live and their own way of doing things, I know, but…” His shoulders jerked in a clumsy shrug. “I just hope you know that you’re not being… a pain or weak or anything, if you _need_ to talk. Sometimes, you need to just let it allllll out, no fancy words, don’t even gotta make much sense, just spit it out. And it feels better.”

In the present moment, Marcy couldn’t vouch for how valid that idea was. He was fairly certain there had been a few times when he’d attempted to ‘let it out’ to some capacity, only for his parents to misunderstand. He usually wound up grounded. Which certainly didn’t feel better. 

But still… Hye was trying to help. Trying to give him some semblance of freedom which, given the context of the day, felt pretty d**n good. 

Marcy still didn’t want to hang all his family’s dirty laundry out to dry, but… he probably owed Hye _something_. Just for caring.

“It’s just…” The words halted, as Marcy realized he had no idea how to summarize this properly. Not without doing exactly what he didn’t want to do and spilling his guts about _all of it_. That was private. Family business. “I… there’s this thing, that my parents what me to do. And I think it’s for stupid reasons and they don’t understand, I just… it. It’s. Unfair, I guess. It feels that way. That… feels childish. To say.”

Hye frowned. “It’s not childish to feel like something’s unfair. There’s a lot of unfair things that happen and people only call it childish so they can dismiss it. But it’s not like really unfair things are things you can outgrow.”

He’d… never considered it that way. But that also wasn’t what Marcy wanted to think about at the moment. He just wanted to sum this up and get it over with, if only so they could head upstairs and do whatever they were gonna do and Marcy could forget about home for a bit.

“Yeah, well… I mean, I guess technically it’s not a horrible thing that they want me to do. By itself…” Marcy thought about the things his dad had said, thought about the camp on its own. “It’s fine. B-But I don’t… If I do it, it feels like I’m admitting they’re right or something. Like I’m losing…”

Hye shrugged again. “Maybe. But it’s only a loss if you believe it is.”

Brow furrowing, Marcy finally glanced in Hye’s direction. The werewolf had mimicked Marcy’s stance, elbows on the counter, but had also cupped his hands under his chin, cheeks puffed. 

“…What do you mean?” Marcy asked.

Swiveling in the barstool, Hye lowered one arm so he could face Marcy properly, and the smile returned. “Well, who decides the winner or loser here? Nobody, ‘cause it’s not like. An actual contest. So that means that _you_ get to decide. If you _believe_ that you’re losing to them, then you are. But what happens when you decide that you’re a winner? Like, if you do the thing, but you do it _your_ way, and they can’t say anything because technically, you did the thing. You did what they wanted, but you made it yours instead of theirs.”

Hye lost him about halfway through and it felt like a whole lot of cotton candy that Marcy could hardly grab onto. But he thought that maybe he got the gist… It was kinda like what Dad had been trying to say. That he didn’t have to have the same reasons for doing it as Mom did. Marcy had a hard time fathoming that such a small, unspoken difference could actually mean anything, though. What did the reasons matter if the outcome was the same? Just like if he were to lose at the upcoming track meet, it could be because he forgot to tie his shoes or it could be because he was too busy thinking about dumb things to pay attention to the races, but either way, the result was the same.

He’d lose.

And losing meant disappointing people.

Maybe that was all he was afraid of…

Hye took advantage of Marcy’s silence to go on. “There’s this quote… ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ _You_ get to decide what you want to do and what you don’t, and if somebody tries to make you feel bad about it, well. They don’t matter. They’re doing whatever they wanna do; that’s their life. Ignore them.”

That was so much easier to say than it was to do. Especially when it came to parents. Marcy couldn’t just tell them ‘I don’t want to go’ and get away with it… could he?

He hadn’t actually tried, had he…

Maybe he should.

But that was a decision for later. He was getting tired of remembering today’s conversation, tired of seeing his parents’ faces in his head. He would consider what Hye was saying—later.

He cleared his throat. “So… when I said I didn’t want to talk about it. How about that?”

That seemed to stop Hye cold. The werewolf’s ears flopped sideways, his face twisting in something like consternation with a dash of confusion that slowly mulled over his words, and eventually pinched into a pout that made Marcy fight hard not to smirk. “That’s… different.”

“Is it?”

Heels clacked on the tile down the hall, and both of them turned in time to see Sunny step into the doorway, in one of his long kimono jackets, a white tank and jean shorts. The elf eyed the two of them closely, seemingly confused by their presence here. “Hi, Marcy. Are you guys… coming up?”

As if the previous conversation hadn’t happened at all, Hye broke through the weighty air and leapt completely out of his chair, sticking the landing and throwing his fists in the air. “YES! We were just talking for a second. Is the game ready?”

“Ji already stole Gertie,” Sunny replied with a small smirk. Gertie was Hye’s favorite character to select as a driver in GoKart Galaxy.

The news struck Hye down like a bullet, the enthusiasm hissing out of him and his entire body sagging, so dramatically that for one second, Marcy thought for sure the werewolf was going to his knees.

“NoooOOOOooo!”

“Hey, you’re the one that took so long.”

“I was being a good friend!!”

“There are no good friends in GoKart.”

“Only when your name is Ji. Imma beat him so bad, he’ll never steal Gertie from me again!” Hye thrust a clenched fist toward the ceiling, while Sunny just grinned.

“Good luck with that.”

As their bickering continued, Marcy found his own amusement beginning to eke out, curling the corners of his mouth. They were so weird… and they didn’t care. Or didn’t seem to. Did they ever feel the same pressures he did? Had they ever been forced to do something they didn’t want to do, for reasons they didn’t agree with? And if they had… did it matter? To them, to him?

Maybe Hye was right… maybe all he had to do was decide what he wanted, and just go with that. No matter what. 

If he had to run, then he might as well enjoy the scenery instead of worry.

Carefully, he got up from his seat. “Nobody’s taken BoneBun yet, have they?”

Sunny shrugged. “Not yet.”

“ _Nice._ Hey, by the way, um. So, this Friday, there’s this track thing…”

* * *

Meet days had a special sort of air about them. There wasn’t quite anything like it, and Marcy wasn’t sure what made them the way that they were. Leaving the school parking lot, there was just something different in the air. Treading slowly around the familiar brick fortress that was West Lorian Public High, the atmosphere drew tighter, like a bow string, tension, anticipation, fear, all steadily rising in intensity and making his blood flow quicker. Then the field came into view past the school buildings, along with the crowds gathered on the edges, up the bleachers, the din of a hundred voices swallowing them up in a cloud of noise, and one came face-first into confrontation with the true meaning of the day: humiliation. One mistake, one falter, and the entire school and their grandmothers would know your shame. Your reputation for the following school year depended on your feats at the end-of-year track meet.

Except, not this year. This year, Marcy swallowed down that anxiety. He didn’t want it, didn’t want to give the fear the satisfaction of feeding on whatever outcomes were possible on this field today. 

"Do good for us!" Mom grinned at him as they climbed the stairs toward the long south walkway.

Instead of answering, he waved them off and left them to bypass the main school building to make their ways toward the field at the back, while Marcy went inside to visit the locker room for the last time this year. There, he changed into his track clothes and cleared out his things, bidding Locker 22 so long for good. He ran a hand over its face, felt the cool of the metal under his fingers. He smiled a little.

The halls of the school were hauntingly empty. His footsteps actually had the chance to echo, bouncing around through the cinder-block corridors. Only a few people passed him on his way toward the back exits, some greeting him, some not. He offered nods, but kept his gaze safely on his toes.

That’s the only reason why he saw the foot coming. A sneaker appeared, hooked around his ankle, and something shoved him into it. With a lurch, his balance pitched and he stumbled into the foyer, shuffling across the indoor-outdoor mat to the sound of a ripple of laughter behind him. He managed to save himself from a faceplant, but just barely; his fingertips braced against the floor. Then the cackling registered as familiar.

Marcy cast a mild glare over his shoulder. “Zazz—”

Leaning up against the wall next to a sprawling trophy case, Zazzy struggled to get a hold of himself, despite it certainly not being _that_ funny. He had a hand pressed over his mouth and his eyes squinted with amusement. Marcy waited several long moments for him to say something, but all he did was laugh to himself.

“Fine.” Marcy sighed and straightened himself up, brushing the dust off his hands. “Whatever, I gotta go.”

“Hey, uh…” Zazzy stepped forward, biting his lip to hide his smirk. The words indicated uncertainty, but the tone… There was no masking how smug he was about whatever it was he wanted to say. It was enough to make Marcy instantly wary. “I see you invited your, uh. Your fancy friends.”

 _Fancy…?_ It took him a moment to realize Zazzy had to be talking about Sunny and Hye. He hadn’t thought Zazzy even remembered them; he’d only met them once or twice. And how had he known Marcy invited them? Just what was he getting at? 

Marcy eyed him, warily meeting his honey-hued eyes. “Yeah… what about it?”

Zazzy’s face changed slowly and hardly, like the slow opening of a tinted car window to give a glimpse to what was underneath. He smiled, sort of, but his lip curled at the same time and his mouth kept opening until all his teeth were bared and he ran his tongue over them carefully, eyes squinting further. At the same time, he shifted back and forth on his feet, fists clenched, like he wanted to move but didn’t. Then his tongue clicked and his jaw snapped shut.

“I saw you.”

That only drove Marcy’s confusion higher. It must’ve shown on his face, since he’d scarcely opened his mouth to question when Zazzy huffed and planted his hands on his hips.

“On May Day. With them. Me and Rush both saw you at the pier.”

It took Marcy a short minute to think that through. Saw them? That must have meant that Zazzy and Rush went ahead and visited the pier anyway, even after Marcy stormed off.

Oh… maybe that’s what this was about.

Marcy sighed. “Yeah, and?”

Faster than he could blink, Zazzy lashed out and shoved him back, making him stumble.

“Hey, hey, hey, watch it!”

“AND,” Zazzy said, glaring now, “ _you_ said you didn’t want to go, a**hole!” 

So many potential responses rose to Marcy’s tongue, as a scowl furrowed his brow and the heat of his irritation, already simmering so close to the surface, lapped at the edges of his throat. “Actually, I didn’t. I said that I had to ask my folks, and then _you_ made fun of me for it.”

Zazzy scoffed. “Oh come on, Ross, take a joke.”

“It’s not a joke if nobody else is laughing.” Marcy stood his ground, in tone and stance, feet planted. Behind him, the track field, his family, his events, Sterling, all waited, bathed in sun; Zazzy was wasting his time. “And aside from that, did you really think being a jerk like that was gonna make me want to go more?”

For a moment, the shorter boy didn’t seem to know how to respond and stumbled over his own lips, before he rolled his eyes heavenward. “It’s not my fault you’re a p***y with thin skin.”

Marcy blinked slowly—channeling Ji again. “You’re not helping your case.”

Zazzy shoved him again; less aggressively, but still enough to knock his shoulder back. “What I wanna know is why you’d go with those stuck-up rich guys and not with _us_ , your _classmates_. When we asked you first. Huh? What’s with that? That’s messed up.”

Marcy swatted his hand away. “Maybe because I wanted to, Tink.”

Expression darkening, Zazzy slowly bared his teeth. “Ohhh… so that’s how it is?”

“Yeah, Zacharias. I would rather go to a fun place with people who _don’t_ mock me for trying to be a responsible person.” With those syllables, the last of Marcy’s worn-thin patience withered away into quiet resignation and, staving off his own eye roll simply because he didn’t want to feel like his mother, he turned on his heel and reached for the door. “I have stuff to do today.”

Zazzy let him go. And as he stepped out into the harsh sunlight, Marcy assumed then that he wouldn’t be seeing anything of him for a long while.

Checking in for the actual events of the day was as simple as finding Coach Flannigan, double checking the schedule page he’d accidentally left with his parents, and then hanging around the rest of the school team while each member waited for their next slot. Marcy avoided Jasper Moody’s enthusiastic back pat and hunkered down next to Sterling in the grass, fiddling with the edge of his jersey number—the familiar double 1s. He plunged his awareness into the chaos surrounding him on all sides—the various cheers, the shouts of coaches, the harsh shriek of whistles marking the start and finish of each heat. While he scanned his gaze over the bleachers, his attention came to a large neon green sign on posterboard, held aloft over the crowd by a bouncing figure.

The sign read “WAY 2 GO” in block letters drawn in permanent ink, followed by #11.

As if they noticed him looking, one gloved hand released the edge of the poster and gave an enthusiastic wave, almost swatting the head of pink hair beside it in the process. 

Hye and Sunny were always so hard to miss. Beside them, Marcy could also spot Giuseppe’s red hair shining bronze in the midday sunlight, and a highlighter-pink headband on the head next to him. Giuseppe and Dori seemed to take note of Hye’s wave and followed suit, making a commotion that disrupted the view of several people behind them while Sunny seemed to be patiently enduring the humiliation. 

Just as Marcy was fighting an amused smirk and raising a hand to wave back, Sterling spoke up.

“You have cool friends,” she said quietly, plucking at some of the grass under her bare knees. She smiled a little. “All my friends think track is boring.”

At the word ‘friends’, Zazzy’s face came to find and Marcy shook it away. Friends didn’t act the way he did… “Yeah… they’re a little much sometimes.”

Sterling’s smile widened. “Better a little much than not enough. At least, as far as friends go.”

That depended on the brand of ‘much’, he supposed. 

“Hey, Marcy…” a familiar voice wound its way through the crowd around them, making Marcy swivel and turn where he sat cross-legged at his spot. Over his right shoulder, he glimpsed a mop of ruddy hair atop a tall frame making his way around other West Lorian athletes; he sported his own jersey, boldly numbered with a big blocky white 6 on the backdrop of purple and gold, and must’ve just come over from his event at the high jump.

“Rush,” Marcy greeted, somewhat confused to see his taller classmate approaching without the familiar blunette at his side—actually, he thought perhaps this might even be the first time Rush had spoken to him without Zazzy initiating contact in the first place. Come to think of it, Marcy hadn’t seen hide or hair of Rush when Zazzy cornered him inside…

Rush approached somewhat sheepishly, rubbing a hand over the back of his sweat-covered neck. He avoided eye contact, gazing around at the passersby, watching some of the other events taking place, mainly the long jump. “Uh… listen. I… I’m sorry about Zazzy.”

Oh. So he’d heard about it. Probably from Zazzy himself. Marcy couldn’t begin to imagine what that conversation had sounded like. But one thing was certain, there was no way an apology from Rush could make up for his best friend’s behavior.

“Did he actually explain or did he just find you to tell you I’m an a**hole?” Marcy deadpanned, picked at some of the grass, inspired by Sterling beside him, who looked on quietly and curiously.

After a long second, Rush answered with a scuff of his toe against the turf. “The latter. Yeah…”

“Yeah.”

An awkward beat passed between them. Somewhere along the far end of the bleachers, a small cluster of people whooped a little and clapped, the sound almost lost to the din of the field. It couldn’t compare at all to the thrill of a football stadium.

“Look,” Rush continued, flopping his long-limbed self down into the grass next to them, “I… He’s a jerk. I get that now, I just… we’ve been friends since first grade. So… familiarity, I guess.”  
Marcy raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it ‘familiarity breeds contempt’?” That was certainly the case with his own family, he could tell that much.

Rush pursed his lips, shook his head. “Whatever. The point is, he’s been way outta line lately. And I can’t deal with it anymore, so I’m not… I’m not hanging out with him anymore. Okay? And you don’t have to either; you don’t have to put up with him.”

His left eyebrow rose to join the other one in a look of surprise and for a long moment, Marcy swore he saw new light pour over his friend. Yes, _friend_ … this was something a friend would do, it seemed like. ‘Care about your happiness’, Sunny had said… Didn’t this count?

“You gonna be okay with that?” Marcy found himself saying, watching Rush’s face carefully. As long as he’d known the two, they’d been side by side. As close as Sunny and Hye, nigh inseparable, to the point where even the teachers just expected them to be together wherever they went. If one entered the classroom too far ahead of the other, they got weird looks until the other showed up. The sudden end of a friendship like that? That had to feel rough. 

Rush just shrugged one shoulder lazily. “I gotta be. There’s not really an alternative.”

There was. But it would mean allowing Zazzy to do whatever he wanted, and the fact that Rush was putting his foot down about it said a lot more than his words could. 

For a brief moment, something in Marcy’s gut compelled him to say something about that. To put into words the swelling gratitude soothing the frustration in the pit of his stomach. It was nice… refreshing, to have someone so blatantly have his best interests in mind. Even Hye hadn’t been that obvious earlier this week. It seemed like something worth commenting on, but the very moment Marcy cracked open his mouth, was the moment Coach barked his name.

“Ross, you’re up!”

He shared one last glance between Rush and Sterling, forced the corners of his mouth up in the smallest of smiles, and then scrambled to his feet. The sprints had begun.

All week long, he’d made an exercise of pushing down his own thoughts, the ones that distracted him from everything else and wouldn’t let him enjoy things, stifling his stupid emotions that bubbled up inside and made him feel like a trash friend, a trash son. He didn’t have time for all that anymore. Now, as he approached the starting line amidst runners from other districts, he put everything he’d learned since February to good use—he took a long, deep breath. He stretched a bit more, focused on the pull of one muscle to the other. Dug his toes against the track’s rubber surface. 

He wasn’t here to work out friendships. He wasn’t here to fulfill some dumb obligation to his parents. He wasn’t here for any of them. He was here to run. Pure and simple.

And that was something he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he could succeed at.

He could ignore the sun, the crowd of onlookers, the unfamiliar students on either side of him… he could ignore everything else. And just…

The starting gun popped. He lunged forward.

_Run._

His friends at Hambleton’s had never seen him run before, he thought as the ground pounded away beneath him. He had more incentive than ever to push himself, to go as fast as he’d ever gone. They were watching, they were cheering—he could hear them, even over the rest of the chaos and the pounding of his own heartbeat. 

He finished first in the 200 meter easily. The tiny cluster of Hambleton’s employees in the stands wouldn’t shut up about it—more specifically, a certain werewolf. Marcy was fairly sure Hye was trying to shout full sentences at him, but he couldn’t understand a word of it. It made him grin anyway.

The 200 meter finals, and the 300 meter set went by in much the same way. Over the course of the school year, Marceline Ross had proven that he was still West Lorian’s best long-distance sprinter. The transition to freshman year hadn’t changed that. He wasn’t about to let that reputation slip at the closing of the first season.

It was odd to watch the 4 x 100 meter relay go by from the sidelines. In middle school, he’d always competed and it had been the highlight of every meet. 

But he didn’t dwell on it for too long. He had something bigger to save his energy for. The true finale of the day, the final event that would close off the school year with a bang that could potentially set his reputation up for his whole sophomore year.

When the time came, four West Lorian students filed onto the track, directed into lane 3, alongside six other school teams from all over Lore. Marcy fell in line behind Jasper, who loomed tall over him, his long blond hair tied back for once and for good reason. Ahead of Jasper stood junior Tuesday Witherspoon, who Marcy knew less by her personality and more by her short, dusty undercut bowl that Mom found so distasteful for a girl, and ahead of her… Sterling looked so small. He could see the way the other schools eyed her—they wouldn’t know what hit ‘em. 

After the display of the teams and runner sequence, Marcy and Jasper and half the others were directed off-track, while Sterling and Tuesday moved into their places. Tuesday at the finish line, and Sterling moving up along the track to the #3 starting position. The announcer finished his introduction, and the field went quiet. 

_Pop._

Off they went. 

Sterling could _move_. It was what had caught Marcy’s attention about her in the first place, during cross country try-outs. It was her second year on the team, and her comfort on the track showed. She was thicker than almost everyone else on the field, but that didn’t stop her. Her small legs worked fast, pumping, pumping her into first for the first quarter, her navy hair flying behind her in its thick tail. Marcy lost his breath a little just watching. She lost ground quickly, like she always did; it was part of their team strategy at this point. Sterling York functioned best in spurts, but could hold her own in a pack. She fell into third place and didn’t let go, even when she fought for the place with the runner from East Lorian, all decked out in his green and gold. Marcy whooped her name and hoped she could hear it.

People always assumed the positions were decided by the first lap. Sterling, as team captain, knew this and worked it to their advantage. Ground was hard to recover after the first batons were passed, but that was where Tuesday came in. The baton reached her hands third, and she immediately fell into fifth place within the first two seconds, but she always finished faster than she started, working in reverse compared to the rest. The end of her lap finished with her firmly in second place with a two meter lead, as Jasper moved into place and reached for the baton.

Marcy watched as he took his place at the finish line with the rest of the final runners. Jasper had always been a blow-hard, even in elementary school, but no one could ever say he wasn’t fast. The guy was built like a thoroughbred, all long limbs and lean muscle and he ran with ridiculously long strides that never really gave him the advantage or disadvantage, but kept him steadily in whatever spot he’d started in. Jasper was their steadiest runner, built for endurance.

The East Lorian runner, however, had moved up to first. They came up fast, suddenly, and handed off a full three meters before Jasper even held out the baton for Marcy to take. Marcy’s heart skipped.

Then his fingers wrapped around the baton and he leapt into stride.

To the roar of the crowd—Hye, Sunny and the others lost in the din somewhere—Marcy pushed his body for all it was worth. He saw the East Lorian runner ahead, the number #2 on his back, and made him the target. Going around the first turn, the runner moved into the second lane, cutting off Marcy’s pass as the distance between them rapidly closed. The pound of Marcy’s own footsteps on the pavement fell almost in time with the blood in his ears. He needed to pass this guy _now_ , before the turn.

_Harder. Better. Faster. Go faster._

He thought he heard Sterling cheer for him.

He crept up alongside East Lorian, on his right. For the briefest of moments, their strides fell in tandem. Then Marcy began to gain—slowly, steadily, stride by stride. Heartbeat by heartbeat. The turn began, and the ground was lost. Neck and neck. Sweat tickled down his nose.

Somebody in the crowd howled.

Coming off the turn, Marcy once more began pulling forward. His chest burned, his throat scraped dry—he could see the finish, so close but so far. The kid from East Lorian was fast, faster than he expected. He’d never matched someone pace for pace like this before. It took everything in him to creep ahead one stride, two strides. He could still see the boy in his peripheral. What if… what if Marcy couldn’t win this…

_“You’re a hard worker, you’re well-mannered, disciplined. And you’ve got that special touch, don’t you—that Marceline knack for success.”_

_“We’ve just been so concerned about you…”_

_“You worried us so much, and for what—a party with a bunch of strangers half an hour away!?”_

_“Look, kiddo. Your mom is just… worried—”_

_“You gotta go ask Mommy, Ross? Gotta ask if it’s okay to go outside and play?”_

She would be so disappointed if he lost. 

His steps faltered. East Lorian pulled ahead.

And if he lost, she’d probably find some way to lump it in with all the other problems she had with him. Perhaps blame his moods, or Hambleton’s for that as well. As if getting a job had somehow made him less responsible instead of more, and making new friends distracted from his old interests. He’d get an earful, and if his performance didn’t improve, there’d be more punishments incoming, just like the summer camp.

What was the point? Win or lose, he still lost. 

He slipped further behind.

Someone howled again, closer, louder. He’d almost completely forgotten about the bleachers. The bleachers where his parents usually sat. And where the neon green sign bobbed high over the heads of everyone else, the person holding it practically leaping with pure excitement. Those beside him cheered and waved. And somewhere behind, Marcy remembered Sterling and Rush, both watching.

He grit his teeth. With a thump of his heart, he picked up speed again. The finish was mere meters away.

Then, East Lorian faltered. His lead wavered, waned… and he fell behind. 

Marcy rocketed forward, steps eating up the track until his heels plunged down over the stark white of the finish line. 

Maybe his mother did dictate what he did, when he did it. She got to say whether something was a good decision or a bad one, got to decide where he got to go and where he didn’t. She decided what success looked like. She decided what reputation she wanted him to have. She decided so much…

The least Marcy could decide for himself was _why_ he did things. He didn’t get his job for her; he got it to earn his own way. He wouldn’t go to the camp because she wanted him to; he’d go so that he could improve.

And he didn’t win this race for her. He won it for himself. 

And for the friends cheering him on from either side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with the last half of this one, tbh. But then, it's been a really odd couple weeks and I had to cram and try and finish it last night and today... and I'm not in the best of places myself. But still, I hope anyone who's following enjoys. :) And stay tuned for next month, where hopefully we'll get a oneshot before Marcy comes home from camp...
> 
> See you then!  
> ~PJ


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